


What Rests Between the Bookends

by ukulele_villian



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Assembly Mage Caleb Widogast, Cult Leader Jester Lavorre, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jester Lavorre Is A Bit Creepy, Major Spoilers, Medical Experimentation, Minor Yeza Brenatto/Nott, POV Alternating, Past Child Abuse, Past Torture, Past Violence, Pining Caleb Widogast, Scourger Caleb Widogast, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Warning: Trent Ikithon, Yeza Has No Idea What Is Happening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 66,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24908026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ukulele_villian/pseuds/ukulele_villian
Summary: Bren Ermendrud, a war mage and gifted practitioner of the arcane arts, has been assigned to the podunk town of Felderwin to protect an asset of The Cerberus Assembly. Unbeknownst to his superiors he is using the opportunity to pursue a personal vendetta.Jester Lavorre, an exile and self-proclaimed high priestess, has decided to settle down on a patch of land outside of Felderwin. There she plans to build the greatest temple the continent has ever seen.And Veth Brenatto misses the days where religion and politics were distant after thoughts.
Relationships: Artagan & Jester Lavorre, Jester Lavorre & Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre & Nott | Veth Brenatto, Jester Lavorre & Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast
Comments: 208
Kudos: 328





	1. The Dust Already On the Shelf

_Veth._

The worst crime Veth ever witnessed in Felderwin was a burglary. It was a small event, back when she was only seven. Whoever did it got away. Broken windows and a few stolen loaves of bread were of no concern to the Dwendalian Empire. As long as they still had the cold-weather crop producing cities, Felderwin could govern itself. 

What she was now doing couldn’t be much worse than burglary. 

Veth clasped her hands together in mock prayer. She was twenty years old, but the urge to suck on one of her braids itched in her mind--a tick developed in her youth. She couldn’t shake the habit, or the hairstyle, even in her twenties. She looked up from faux prayer and nodded her head at a fellow halfling woman placing bread as a tithe. The woman didn’t spare any indication she’d seen Veth’s polite nod. 

After her brother’s and father’s death, her role as a laughing stock and pariah was cemented. It wasn't till after the goblin attack that she’d then become invisible too. Her neighbors treated her survival as a painful souvenir. Veth fumbled with the copper coins in her pockets, they clicked against the buttons and mushrooms she’d placed there this morning. All her best talismans were here to calm her down. Her sweaty fingers slipped against them till she finally forced their grip to harden on the ones she needed. 

Could she look back after this? Or had that moment already passed when she agreed to help Jester? She did not know. Veth hated those thoughts. Those thoughts were for people who spent long hours trying to place themselves in the universe with daydreams--like Jester. Veth did not have time for such thoughts. 

As Veth placed the coins on the shrine to the Dawn Father, she snorted. The statue of the Dawn Father was tall, a bit elf shaped around the face, and human looking in its arrogance. There were no official temples in Felderwin, just homestead shrines, and now a few of these gaudy relics that the Righteous Brand had dragged in to boost moral. Veth licked her thumb and pressed it into each coin on the altar. A little superstition alongside science. The candles around the shrine would heat up the powder laced in the rims of the copper pieces. 

The chemical reaction started right as Veth began to walk away. Colorful smoke was the first layer of her fireworks; the second was what she called ‘fountain sparklers’; and the third popping--incessant pops across the shrine. The yellow, orange, and blue smoke grew in magnitude, dusting the neighbor who hadn’t recognized Veth. The lady yelped and grabbed her bread off the altar in shock. A small group of children, mixed halfling and human kids, ran forward to first see the commotion and then play in the cloud. This finally caught the attention of the Crownsguard, who had been taking a nap against the general store wall. His uniform’s epaulettes were crooked. 

Veth’s feet told her to run. She scolded them, and then started sucking on her braid instead. 

_His_ voice materialized behind her just when she thought she was safe. He had a way of always making her jump when he appeared. Unlike Jester, Veth didn’t appreciate his omnipotence _“You’re not going to stay and watch? Housewives really must learn to stop and smell the flowers; especially if they’re responsible for the fertilizer.”_

“Hush!” Veth whispered under her breath. She didn’t need more rumors from the neighbors. Dirty, stupid, ugly, fidgety Veth who now talked to herself too. Gods, she hated the way his voice slotted alongside her mind. Weird and creepy. 

“ _Yes, yes, mother-halfling dearest,”_ he said and chuckled as he saw Veth looking to see if anyone else saw him. Of course no one else saw him. She had to be mad, insane like Jester. The liquor from Veth's last binge drink had stuck to the walls of her stomach and leaked into her head. “ _Watch out for that carriage, by the way.”_

“What?”

The crimson carriage, with the insignia of King Dwendal on it’s doors, sped past Veth, sending a splatter of mud and rainwater over her dress and legs. It then abruptly slowed, the carriage tilting to the side with interrupted inertia at the sudden rest. It was now fully stopped in front of Yeza’s and Veth’s apothecary. 

She missed when she didn’t have to care about politics and religion. 

  
  


\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Veth came through the back of the house, changed her stockings in a huff and grumble, and stilled her thumping heart. It was weird of Lady Derogna to ride in a carriage. The woman boasted about flying and teleporting wherever she went. 

Veth’s hands were shaking as she assembled the tea saucers on the tray. Lady Derogna had ‘requested’ they have some for her the next time she would be in town to check on Yeza’s work. 

_Dumb bitch. Dumb carriage. Dumb half-elf._

Veth lifted the heavy tray, turning her back to push open the door. She turned into the main room of the apothecary and froze. 

A young, human man with red hair stood on the other side of the counter. He stopped mid sentence when he saw Veth enter, tilted his head, and was now watching her closely. He nodded politely and then smiled. “And who is this, _Herr_ Brenatto?” 

His voice was...gentle.

Yeza was on his step stool at the counter. The building had belonged to humans before they’d moved in, so certain features had to be tinkered with to accommodate their heights. Yeza fumbled for a reply before finally stuttering out, “My- My wife, Vethy. I- I mean Veth. This is my wife, Veth.” 

Veth pulled out the polite smile she used on most Crownsguards and Empire agents. ‘Forget me’ the smile said. ‘I’m small’ it whispered before sinking away into the fog between her and everyone else these days. The man kept staring at her, though. He was wearing the colors of the Empire, but he didn’t wear the Righteousbrand’s crest. Like Lady Derogna he had an ornate pendant with three long, coffin-like diamonds surrounded by eight arched pillars that surrounded the diamonds like long fingers: The Cerberus Assembly. 

The man raised an eyebrow, still not taking his eyes off of Veth. “You were not wed last harvest, _Herr_ Brenatto. This is new?” 

“Oh! Yes, Veth and I finally, uh, finally made it official. The goblin attack really put everything in perspective for me. Lady Derogna actually on her last visit brought us some flour- flour for the wedding cake.” He babbled. Yeza was fidgeting despite the man’s focus no longer being on him, but wholly on his wife. 

The human man's face was free of any blemishes, and clean shaven too. Veth was not used to men being clean shaven. Even Crownsguards and soldiers stylized their facial hair. He couldn’t be much older than Veth or Yeza. Though, everything about him felt painfully tight. 

“That sounds wonderful.” The man cleared his throat, and with a flick of his wrist the tea tray was rising out of Veth’s arms and levitating towards the counter. “Then forgive my intrusion into your home, _Frau_ Brenatto.” 

Veth's cheek's turned hot. Lady Derogna did not show her magic as freely. She swallowed when the man cocked his head at her response. “Are you here to check up on my husband’s progress with the formulas?” she asked to try and cover up the awkwardness.

“No, no I am here for my own business at this moment.” He poured the tea without his levitation and passed a cup first to Yeza, who spent a second not being sure why the man was offering it to him. Veth noticed the man wore thick gloves, gauntlets almost, that went past his elbows. He had not taken them off despite the shop’s heat from their ovens in the back. Yeza quickly took the cup and whispered a thank you. “Forgive me, I’m a bit out of practice with my diplomacy. I’ve introduced myself to your husband already, but not to you. I am Bren Ermendrud.” 

Each word sounded pristine and practiced to Veth. He was a beautiful man; she realized he had long eyelashes. 

And she knew, for the lives of everyone around her, she needed to hate him. 

“Well, nice to meet you too.” Veth politely and almost robotically responded. She wouldn’t be fooled by his prettiness or his finely woven clothes. She could tell by the way he clasped his hands behind his back and stared down at her exactly what he was behind the soft beauty. He was still one of Lady Derogna’s people. People cut from the same cloth in her experience were also made of the same patterns. “I’ll be in the back if you need anything. It’s so hot this time of year, you know. I should turn down the ovens-”

“No need for that. I have just a few questions before we then move to matters that include you both specifically.” He interrupted her filler. Veth’s stomach flipped at the mention of her and Yeza being needed for more Empire business. Had they not been quick enough with their last batch of formulas? What demands would they bring now? They kept promising more funds would come for their troubles, but they had yet to see it. 

She loved her husband, but he was a poor negotiator. 

Veth placed a single hand against her pocket to remind herself of her talismans. 

Ermendrud stared at her hand and pocket, but then continued, not waiting for Veth or her husband’s confirmation. “In the last six months a person of interest to me-- to our people has come through Felderwin.”

“We get a lot of customers so it’s hard to keep track of everyone.” Veth smiled. 

“I assure you that it is difficult to miss her, _Frau_ Brenatto.” Ermendrud put his gloved hands to his face, held them there for an instant, and then pulled them away to reveal an entirely different one. His magic made Veth and Yeza gape. They knew Lady Derogna could teleport and fly, it didn’t change that neither of them had ever seen it. The man in front of them had miraculously changed his entire face. The skin’s pigment was now blue, the nose like a button, the eyes with pupil’s like a goat, the hair curly and navy colored too. Two spiral horns also appeared from against Ermendrud’s temples. 

Yeza narrowed his eyes. “A tiefling in Felderwin?” 

Veth held her breath and tongue. It was an exact replica of Jester. She’d gotten careless and someone had seen her, and that someone had reported to someone else, who most likely reported to his higher up. It had travelled all the way to the perfectly refined man who had made his way to their shop. 

_She’s a blue skinned woman with fucking horns! What did we think was going to happen?_

_“Don’t be too harsh on her, now. You know all of that is why you love her so.”_ Now Jester’s weirdo was reading Veth’s thoughts. Great. 

“Yes, not yet dangerous, but alarming.” Ermendrud said through the replica of Jester’s face. His smooth voice coming out of Jester's lip was uncanny. “Persuasive too. I’m to believe she has talents in the fields of enchantment and faculty over-powering.” Ermendrud’s replica Jester-eyes were still on Veth. She felt like he’d only taken them off of her when he’d transformed. 

“I see.” Yeza pushed his glasses up and wrung his hands. He’d always been fidgety, and since the goblin attack his nerves had worsened. Veth was almost overcome with the urge to climb onto the step ladder and carry him away from Ermendrud’s prying, and then for good measure she would carry him all the way out of Felderwin too. “And you’re worried this woman could come after the research I’m doing with the Assembly?”

Bless Yeza; Ermendrud pulled his calculating gaze away from Veth to address her husband’s comment. Veth let herself breathe only momentarily. 

“We nearly lost you to the goblins, and now we fear for your safety--” Veth looked at her shoes while Ermendrud spoke. She could still remember the taste of the air from when they took her and Yeza. “--and of course the safety of your wife, Veth.” 

Veth raised her head slowly. Ermendrud had dropped his disguise of Jester and returned to staring at her. “That is why I will be spending the duration of my investigation in Felderwin. I have been assigned to protect you, as you are an asset to the Crown.” 

Only Veth heard the manic, echoing laughter of the creature known as The Traveler in the walls of her head. 

  
  


\---------------------------------------

_Bren._   
  


The house they gave Bren was modest. Good, he needed to acclimate back to agrarian life if this was going to work. He can tell they chose the home in the hope that it would not overwhelm him. 

Bren had to be reminded this was not a punishment. His master was being strategic with him. It made no sense to have all his best out in the field at once. 

It took him ten minutes to unpack his possessions. He’d folded up his Assembly garbs religiously, placing each piece into a compartment in the house’s cellar. Now, he childishly wanted to pull them back out, hold them, and remind himself that this disguise was only that--a disguise. He did not think himself vain. No, it was just when he looked in the lavatory mirror he saw... _them_. Una and Leofric could have never afforded to wear clothes dyed red; Bren’s uniform cost as much as their house. 

His new clothes were what he’d typically use to run errands in Rexxentrum and Zadash. Browns and beiges were forgettable, a frayed button at his coat’s wrist collar was all part of the guise he’d put on. 

Restless, Bren pulled a brush out from the back of the cupboard, and a bead out of his pocket. He smashed the bead and brush together, sending soap and water cascading across the floor, and scrubbed till his knees sent spasms to his back. He would have to use the well in town for his water tomorrow; transmuter-beads were a luxury item and he’d only brought about ten with him. 

A list of monotonous tasks filled Bren’s head; all things to keep up appearances, maintain the illusion of normalcy, ways to keep the low level bureaucrats and neighbors alike out of his way. 

_And stave off the obsession._

The restlessness trickled like sweat down his forehead. It demanded he wipe at his brow to get it away from his eyes. 

It took no time for him to enter the cellar of the house. The living area above was sparse and plain. It was for show with a single bedroom and kitchen area. The cellar was real, authentic, and acutely an environment of the truth and pursuit of truth. There was a reason he stored his uniform down here. Lamp light cast a yellow glow over the room, his own personal moon at the eve of a harvest. 

In the corner was also a space cleared for a rune-circle back to his home. In an instant he could be back in his room. He could be back with his master. Bren resisted the urge to scratch his arms, and instead began to work. 

Bren rolled out the maps of his Empire, the Coastal City States, and of course what little they knew of the wastes and evils of Xhorhauss. He pressed each domain together imitating scale and direction as best he could. He then gathered the reports; these were written accounts from Idol-Master’s in each town and municipality. They discussed heresy against the Crown ranging from the small (a disrespectful merchant spitting near a shrine to the Lawbearer) to the more alarming (a woman found murdered in her home, the walls painted with her blood and the symbols of the Caustic Heart; her child was still unaccounted for). He sucked in his breath and let out a large sigh.

He could not understand why his arms were itching again. He’d taken great pains to control himself and not hinder the recovery from his last surgery. _You’re not a child anymore. It’s time to let go of your nervous pickings and ticks._

He quickly reached into the lowest cabinet for the _other_ artifacts, the key evidence: the scrap of green cloth caught on a branch in Trostenwald; the forgotten pouch of deliciousness-dust she’d left at a tavern in Hupperdook; the amulet with her image that he’d obtained from the memory of an eye-witness; and the hundreds of lewd drawings left in the wake of her vandalizing the temple of The Platinum Dragon in Zadash. Bren had collected them all. If he could not indulge one bad habit, he would settle for the other. 

He had not been entirely truthful to the Brenattos yesterday afternoon. Yes, he was to be their protector. That much had been true. 

Bren gently picked up the amulet and tilted it to each side to catch the yellow glow of the desk lantern. The magic of anchoring images to objects was still in its infancy. The image was deceivingly playful, if not a bit blurry; you could fool yourself into imaging that the young woman was a friend. 

_And that’s where it starts._ He could see the metamorphosis taking shape: this would not end benignly.

Her horns reminded Bren of a lamb. She was round, unlike him. And she looked... _soft_. In the image she was turning to look over her shoulder with a wide grin, like she was daring someone to chase her. She’d acted during the Harvest Festival, a move too convenient to be a mistake. Bren could see orange and red ribbons woven around her horns, maybe purchased from a vendor earlier in the day. The overworked imbeciles with the city Crownsguards had reported that there had been seven of her at one time, multiple versions of her ducking between festival goers and merchants alike. One claimed he’d restrained her, and then babbled about how she vanished reappearing fifteen feet away. They had complained about how she’d used the crowds and booths to escape from them. 

_Complaints, complaints, complaints._ He squeezed the locket’s chain, it shook in his hand. 

Bren’s master had warned him of the little incompetencies. _They add up, and soon they build up with rot._

The locket stopped shaking as Bren cajoled his mind from anger to analyzation again. In her smile Bren saw two sharp canines that peaked out from under her top lip. _Not as soft as she seems._

A knock at his door dragged him out of his thoughts. He quickly hurried up the cellar stairs, rubbing his face and molding it into something friendly looking. Bren had set an arcane string around the perimeter of his stairs to the house’s porch. Who had the audacity to bypass the string and still announce their presence by knocking?

Bren traced a sigil onto his side of the door. The wood shimmered and shifted to a one-way glass, and on the other side was the pudgy and nerve-wracked Frau Brenatto. She was deciding where to place a basket on his porch, looking left and right. 

He wrinkled his nose at her. Yeza Brenatto had come into the Assembly’s attention because of his prodigy-like aptitude in chemistry, yet contradicting simple-mindedness. Bren had read his master’s assessment of the man: he was a dream come true to the Assembly. The halfing had no ambitions to rise through their ranks, no desire to play their subtle political games, and no sense to negotiate for better treatment under their contract. Yeza had cowered and complied, utilizing his brilliant mind for no other purpose than to serve them. He seemed to also have no friends or family. When Bren had first entered the man’s shop, Yeza had been perfectly demure and accommodating. No surprises from him. 

His wife on the other hand…

Bren continued watching her consider knocking on his door again. She’d been terrified of him when they met; that was to be expected. The Assembly’s Crest did a lot of the heavy lifting in a negotiation with cattle and farmer folk. The wife though, despite her fear and trepidation, had the faintest glimmer in her. Her defiance and wit peaked out, but was then stamped back into submission. 

It was a bit nostalgic to Bren. Like in his early days. 

His master had taught him to watch for those glimmers. If they were nurtured properly then they could yield results. If left unchecked, they could grow into resentment. Most halflings were happy to toil away their lives on farms and homesteads, but there were gems among the shit and filth. Bren knew this better than anyone. He opened the door, and had to bite back his frustration at seeing the poor woman instinctually flinch backwards. Unlike his other colleagues, Bren did not want to relish in the Brenatto couple’s terror of the Assembly. “What do I owe the pleasure of a visit, _Frau_ Brenatto?”

She pinched her lips together and held the basket forward. “Uh, welcome to the neighborhood, Lord Ermendrud.” 

He cocked his head to the side and struggled to keep his face passive. He prayed to the Gods she hadn’t gone off and blown his cover already by spreading his actual name. “ _Danke_ , please remember to call me Caleb from here and on. It was one of the few things I asked of you and your husband last afternoon.” 

They then stood in terse silence. Frau Brenatto murmured back: “You know, it’s a little hot outside to be wearing gloves _and_ a sweater.” 

_There it is_. 

Bren touched the scarf around his neck. Was this her resentment at her husband’s treatment by the Assembly? Or was this anger a piece of something left behind after her captivity? He’d read that report too. Goblins prefer large livestock, but aren’t picky eaters by any means. “Your husband told me it was you who helped him get away from the goblins.” That was a lie. Yeza and him had talked very little about his abduction a few seasons prior. He was making assumptions in hopes she’d reveal more through her reactions. “You are brave?” 

Goblins no longer held any sway over Bren. Pests and crawly little creatures could be made into quick timber. _But, for a girl like Veth-_

She blushed heavily before thrusting the basket even further forward. _Incredibly easy to read. She wants to be anywhere but here. She hates me._ “I’m not.” Veth said, and Bren detected a hint of coldness in her response. 

“Goblins live just across that river.” Bren’s curiosity pushed him. “And you are one of the few halflings of Felderwin who’s lived to see them, but also to return to her home. That is brave, isn’t it?” 

The girl pursed her lips. “You’re not going to take this food, huh?”

Bren shook his head and chuckled. He never ate anything not made by his own hand, or that hadn’t gone through a spell of detection first from his master. “I would hate to impose. I’m technically here to be taking care of you. Not the other way around. Food is scarce in these times, keep it for yourself.”

Veth looked at her shoes again, still trying to find a way to push the food off onto him. “Your coat’s sleeve, it's fraying. If you're not going to take the bread...could I hem it for you?” She rushed through her question, spitting it out of nowhere. 

“You do not need to flatter me.”

Her face flushed an even darker shade than before. “I’m not doing that!”

She hated him because he flustered her. Not too surprising. 

He shrugged his coat off, mildly charmed. He had not yet attuned it to his pocket dimension, so there was no harm in letting her fiddle. It had been a long time since he’d experienced small town rituals. This pleasentary was her way of boosting herself in the face of being out of her element. Nothing suspicious. He leaned down to hand it to her, trying his best to not smile at how big his coat was compared to her tiny form. “You will have to tell me more on how you escaped, _ja_? You and your husband. I am eager to become close to your family while your husband works for us.” 

Bren watched Veth muster a pained smile. She could tell his request was moreso a demand. Everytime her skepticality shone through her meekness he became more uncertain of her. 

_She is hiding._

He watched her scamper off with a curtsey, and for some reason he felt a pinch in his gut. Like he’d made a wrong choice somewhere in the pathway of their conversation. 

“Curious.” Bren said to himself. 

\--------------------------------------

_Jester._   
  


Jester held the coat out in front of her. It was boring and ugly. There were two pockets with nothing in them, it had no patterns, and the buttons were a poor imitation of the color caramel. She leaned in close, and inhaled any secrets that could be smelt and not seen. 

Veth made a face and turned away, like she was ashamed to watch. 

Jester giggled and rolled her eyes at her disciple. She then pulled one of the sleeves to her face and smelled it in an exaggerated and cartoonish manner. The man from the Empire had been meant to take the basket and eat the bread sprinkled with Veth’s enhanced Deliciousness Dust. The Traveler had other plans it seemed. 

Just as Jester had expected the coat smelled more interesting than it looked, like a day where the servants in her Mama’s chateau cleaned out the coal-fire ovens. Jester felt a pang of nostalgia passing her by. She blew it away with a look to her second best friend, slash first disciple, and a joke formed on her lips. 

“Is he hot?” Jester asked Veth, making sure her face was animated with eyebrow wiggles and a smirk. 

“N-No!” Veth’s eyes grew wide as saucers. Jester loved this woman--loved how easy it was to read her.

“So he’s really hot, good to know.” Jester giggled and rolled away from Veth trying to punch her arm. They were laying on a picnic blanket Veth had brought in her basket. “Your face got all dark when I asked. You looked so guilty. Wait, wait, wait...You’re _married_ , Veth!” 

Veth pulled her legs to her chest, sullen and frustrated. “He’s creepy, Jester. And he won’t stop staring at me.” 

Jester pouted, and shrugged. She folded the coat neatly before she picked off the loose button on its sleeve. “You’ve called me creepy too. And you’ve called The Traveler creepy. I bet Empire man has a crush on you.”

“This guy isn’t a goblin, Jester. You can’t smash his head in with your magic and dump his body in the river.”

“I know--” Jester flipped the button between her knuckles and over her fingers, a sleight of hand she’d learned from another tiefling at a carnival. “--that’s why I’m making us do all this work; so we can dump his body somewhere cool, like a volcano.” 

A tiny smile peaked out of the corner of Veth’s mouth. “What’s a volcano?”

“Oh! It’s like a mountain, but with _fire._ Also, on an island usually--I think.” 

They ate the rest of the bread as Jester pulled out a jar of honey and bubbling lemonade she’d been saving. Veth mumbled that they might feel funny because of the dust baked in, but that they’d earned a little celebration for their efforts. 

“So,” Veth slurred on the fourth loaf in. “The button’s supposed to help you spy on him?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! It’s way better this way. Now we don’t have to break into his house!” 

Veth covered her face with both her hands. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he has a special string around his home anyway. I had to jump over it when I walked up the stairs.” 

Jester narrowed her eyes. “You can _see_ it?”

“No! No, I can’t! Fuck!”

They’d been arguing about this ever since they’d fought off the goblins together. Veth was her first disciple, not a charity case, and not chosen by the Traveler for _nothing_. There was a glimmer in Veth, but she refused to use it. This rubbed against Jester, poking and needling. “You are the worst liar ever. I have no idea how Empire man believed you about the coat.”

“I think he realizes I’m just a house-wife.”

“You’re not! You’re the most badass, chemist, prankster, thief, house-wife ever! Empire man is totally in love with you.” 

“His name is Ermendrud. And I think you’ve got it wrong, Jessie: he’s here for you. He knew your face.”

“I’m super special and beautiful, so that’s not too surprising.” She elongated the ‘u’ in ‘super’, making it sound like soup with her accent. It was weird, imagining a boring Empire man obsessed with her. 

How could it matter? How could one man who smelled like a bonfire do anything to her and her plans? It was too late, anyway. She’d found a clearing in the forest to build the temple, and Veth had already found her on a fateful night in the woods. 

“You’re not scared.” 

“Should I be?” Jester asked lazily. Veth was scared of everything, really. Despite all that Jester had already seen of her. Jester theorized it was one of the reasons she’d fallen for Yeza, someone who could validate her anxiety. Or maybe Veth secretly wanted to be brave. Jester had helped her escape from the goblins. Helped sometimes seemed like a generous way to describe it. 

“ _You are so very astute.”_ The Traveler whispered into Jester’s ear and she leaned into it. 

“I have a great teacher and best friend!” Jester said and Veth groaned, knowing exactly who she was talking to. 

“We’re so dead.” Veth said. 


	2. The Pages In Between

_Veth._

Before the goblin attack, Veth’s worst fear was Yeza not loving her. It was her brother’s fault. She’d become accustomed to reading into every little movement and mood of his; it was all she could do to make way for an incoming storm. He was cruel because she could never be anything more than herself. She was not smart, nor brave, or beautiful. 

_She was Veth._

So, Veth did not daydream or ponder why Yeza, her only friend in the entire world, ceased talking to her one day. He didn’t come to their favorite spot by the stream, and she knew it wasn’t an accident. The answer was obvious: he woke up and realized who she was. Veth knew you could not become more than yourself. You could grow, yes that was true. But, everyone she’d seen had grown _into_ themselves, like a sweater that misfit, but then became a fitting favorite. 

She had to suck in her anger at Yeza, her family, Felderwin, and herself. She’d grown complacent in her happiness, forgetting to guard against the reality that followed her everywhere. Her stomach burned, and the smoke from helplessness clung its way up through her esophagus, out her nose, and blinded her from the danger Yeza had been in. Her anger was justified, but she couldn’t see how Yeza would go into the Saturday market looking over his shoulder, or how he’d sometimes open his mouth to tell her something from across a Felderwin dirt road, make pained eye-contact, and then race through an ashamed greeting. 

Veth had begun to hate him. 

_He’s taunting me. I should have never told him about my family. I should have never spilled my guts onto the shore of the river in front of him._

Then, the weather became cold. The days were short, and clouds snuffed out their limited daylight. Veth had been taught that goblins were pests, like wolves and foxes. 

Except wolves and foxes didn’t strategically target the grain silos and wait for their prey to get desperate. 

In a crate, destiny had jammed Veth and Yeza together while their captors laughed gleefully at their good fortune. All the smart, human Crownsguards had taken up posts in warmer climates. The few who remained had drawn the shortest straws, or were being punished in some way. Their prison crate was hot, sticky, and dark. All too close to the bonfire and too small for the both of them. Yeza must have thought he was going to die. Veth had been sure of the end when she’d been grabbed off the streets, in broad daylight too. 

They had been shoved next to each other, like sausages saved for later. Veth wasn’t much into praying back then. She’d assumed Yeza and the crate was a punishment for that too. 

And then...He’d asked her to marry him. He said it slowly, not fitting for their situation, their broken friendship, and the smell of their sweat and waste in the crate. Despite dehydration, she sucked in a glob of spit and catapulted it from the back of her throat. She heard it hit his cheek, and he started crying. 

_Fuck him!_ Veth had thought victoriously. That victory had not lasted. Yeza told her everything: The Cerberus Assembly--real mages and wizards from the stories told around camp fires--had chosen him for their next ‘project’. The workload explained a lot of his absence, and so did the woman who was overseeing his work. 

“Lady Derogna trapped you.” Veth had whispered to him after she heard the extent of it. 

“Not trapped, Vethy!” Yeza had tried to backpedal on what he’d told her. She figured that they had threatened him if he complained. 

So she said yes. Veth had thought, ‘Why the hell not’. The future was dark. She wanted to have a one last good memory in the rekindling of their lives. It hadn’t been her fault this time. Someone had taken Yeza away from her instead. 

_And now they’re here for Jester._

Veth walked towards the crowd near the general store, over a dozen farmers and neighbors were gawking at the spectacle, just like Jester had predicted. Three teenage Crownsguards were struggling to carry a statue of Melora, the goddess of the good harvest, out of the store. Halflings in Felderwin had quietly worshipped her for decades, despite the Crown's strict ban on foreign gods. Veth had been into the general store dozens of times, but never paid mind to the hunk of old drift wood that stank in the corner. The smell of the ocean brine it emitted had made her itch. 

Veth hadn’t even known it was Melora because before she’d never had a reason to give pause. It had been an ugly, moss covered statue, but Jester and The Traveler had informed her someone in Felderwin had reported it. Veth wondered if the reporter had made any money off their snitching. As the Crownsguards knocked the statue into the doorframe again, arguing about which way to turn it, Veth let herself smile at their struggle. 

If this was heresy, then it seemed sexier in whispers and myth than in practice to her. 

It was a hot summer day, cicadas chirping and the like. But, divine and on cue, a gust of wind rippled from the forest. The Traveler was weird, a foreign god, but oddly punctual and _present_. He was not a statue made of wood. Veth waited for The Traveler’s snide voice to order her to complete this prank. 

_I am eager to become close to your family while your husband works for us._

_A tea saucer levitating out of her hands and into his. Smug, powerful, well-dressed._

_Vess Derogna and all the beautiful necklaces around pins clasped to her breasts. Bren Ermendrud and his carriage, the house they gave him, and all the authority in the world._

Veth dropped Jester’s pamphlets and sunk back into the crowd. 

Like snow in summer, the colorful stationery traveled through her home on the supernatural wind. Her neighbors ‘oohed’ and ‘ahed’. Veth had only dropped two rolls of ten, but yet again, divine magic did its work and thousands of drawings swirled in the air. The Crownsguards dropped the statue of Melora, opening their mouths like fish. The statue rolled, its head falling off and spinning a few feet away. 

As Veth walked home, she realized that the Traveler hadn’t been in her head all day. He wasn’t there now, and he hadn’t been in there when she dropped the pamphlets. 

She couldn’t stop smiling. 

\------------------------------------

_Bren._

Bren still dreamed about the night of Leofric and Una’s death. His imagination gave him all types of fantasia and alternate scenarios. If he’d been there to talk their way to safety, or fight for them, instead of in a dormitory bunk, could he have changed what happened? 

His master believed not. Bren was unsure if his master knew that he had not grown out of his daydreams. 

Bren had been in Felderwin Tillage for a week and the land was doing its best to resurrect the weaknesses he’d diligently sought to stamp out. The routine of observing the Brenatto’s every other day did nothing for his nerves. Yeza Brenatto shied away from conversation, while his wife seemed to keep to the backroom. Vess Derogna had made the Assembly more like jailers to the halfling family, than co-workers or protectors. 

“This will be good for you,” His master had said. Bren was learning to hate how his colleagues began their orders with that phrase. “Not a very glamorous mission, but one that I trust will calm your restlessness.” His master had then placed his hands on Bren’s shoulders, grounding Bren in the present like he used to when Bren was a child. 

Bren’s arms itched. They had no right to, but they did anyway. He’d tried writing a few letters to Astrid, or Eudowolf, but then threw them inside his desk to be forgotten. They were busy and didn’t need his clinging. This was how he found himself walking the streets of Felderwin Tillage invisibly. Invisibility had used to seem fantastical, unobtainable, _forbidden._ Now, it was an old hat of his. Bren pulled out a stick of tree-gum, chewed, muttered the words; and like that he vanished. 

Bren counted the windows of every house, memorized the streets, recorded the faces of those he saw. In a week’s time he’d already learned over thirty people’s names by listening to their conversations, little segments of their lives. He would soon have the whole of Felderwin burned into the base of his brain and the backs of his eyelids, along with the lives of everyone in it. They were simple creatures, nothing like the mages of the Assembly. 

_You too, were once a simple creature._

The wind picked up, harmlessly at first, and then transitioned to a speed he couldn’t believe possible in the dead of summer. It forced him to pull his scarf and coat closer to his body. Goosebumps had him hugging himself, doing everything to keep from rubbing and agitating his arms. 

  
  


He looked up from pulling his coat to him, and was assailed by hundreds of colorful papers. The momentary stumbling and panic had his invisibility stutter, and him falling on his ass in the cobblestone street. He bet he looked like a drunk clawing at his face. Bren ripped the papers off his eyes, and rage gave way to the manic vindication he’d never expected would come so easily, and so early. He’d been studying her drawings for enough time to recognize key details and themes of her vandalism. Hidden phallic imagery, an abundance of the color green, and rare creatures from other planes of existence. 

_Why the unicorn? Is it a code? Is she trying to peddle that the make believe charlatan she worships is a unicorn?_

He started running. Anywhere, everywhere, somewhere. She had to be near. He hoped above all else that she was close. 

_But what then?_ If he caught her now, he would have to admit to his master and friends what he’d been doing. He could not even bring her to the Crownsguards occupying Felderwin. Their low ranking, and alerting them of an Assembly Mage in their midst, could bring harm to the Brenattos and the mission. They would all know if he captured her without evidence; it had been a decade since Leofric and Una’s death and he had not moved on. He was falling back into the conspiracy of their deaths, the loose ends only he saw, the questions only he had. He was alone. Bren ran untill he reached the outskirts of Felderwin, the forest and the places where they said goblins lived. 

In Blumenthal, Leofric and Una had been guarded by watchtowers perfectly situated to keep them safe from such creatures that could lurk. 

_And keep the crops safe. Keep the livestock safe too. No, to keep them safe first and foremost._

He sat on the edge of a river bank, spreading out the drawings clenched in his fist and still stuck to his clothes. They were crude in theme, but they were also done with an elegance and ingenuity unseen by most painters in The Empire. The schools of art and style were rigorously approved by the Crown. His master was one of the heads of distribution, so Bren had picked up on an appreciation for the crafts' detail. They had no writing, but depicted gluttony and lust through images of a green cloaked figure watching over generic figures eating and running off together into the trees and bushes. Nothing was subtle, and one image of a decapitated manticore, with pink ribbons tied in its lion's mane, made Bren blanch. 

_This is not a dead end. She has only closed and locked the door behind her. This is not a dead end._

Bren reached into his pocket, and pulled out a jade stone. The glyph on its center was made of melted, copper wire. The device was a creation he had recently tested and produced for the Cerberus Assembly. It was an accomplishment from back when they’d given him actual currency alongside the currency of trust. He’d invented to his heart’s content. 

Bren activated the sending stone, placing a gentle thumb over the glyph and reading out the connection runes. He could send twenty five words once a day, but the current receiver of this message might blow off his concerns--like she usually did. 

“Expositor Lionett,” Bren said quickly into the stone. There were few people in the world who could make him feel self-conscious about his accent; she was one of them. “I request your counsel in a matter that once again correlates with our mutual research into the Angel of Irons Cult. I know-” The spell cut out. Bren threw his head back and groaned. 

_She always has to get the last word in. Please, Beauregard get the last word in._

“Hm,” The Expositor paused, the spell facilitating time and more luxury for her response. Bren was glad she could not hear his sigh of relief. Her voice, low and smooth, was omniscient in his mind. He wondered what strange task the Cobalt Soul, the librarians and mystics of The Empire, had her doing now. “You invented these stones, you should know them better. I’m busy. I’ll drop by Felderwin anyway. Don’t fuck me over again, Scourger.” 

The spell cut out, and Caleb winced at the nickname. He hadn’t been in the official Volstrucker corps in over a year. He also had no idea how Expositor Lionett knew he was in Felderwin. 

Like with Veth Brenatto, he could not escape the intuition that he was making mistakes. 

  
  


\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Jester._

Jester missed her family, but she had big plans to nurse the worries and the doubts away. Right now she wanted the window panes to be red, a brick colored red or clay red. The door of the temple could be ruby colored though. 

“Traveler,” Jester said, sticking her tongue out, and holding her index and thumb to form a corner. “What if the green clashes with the red ?”

_“Do you particularly care if it does?”_ He asked. The Traveler was not in her mind, but he was not fully physical either. A mirage of sorts floated a few inches off the grass, a figure in a green cloak with a hood pulled over the top half of his face. His voice was low, but it filled the area somehow

“I do! I want it to look nice for us!” 

_“Concentrate instead on making it surprising. We wish to bring surprising people to our family, they need not entirely be nice.”_

_Family._

_Too bad you can’t build this in Nicodranus_

Jester opened up her mind to the spell, the Traveler, and the rush of belief. She pulled out a paintbrush, held it like a sword, and channeled a memory from her childhood of The Traveler. She waved the brush like a wand, and brick work began to materialize. She’d used the memory of their first big prank on a cook back in her mama’s chateau. Jester smirked at him, and he nodded once for her to continue. This dance would take an hour of time, memories, and faith. Always faith. She knew very little of how other people became magical. And Jester could not care how they did it. Jester twirled and the door of the temple materialized. Surely her magic was stronger than that man from the Empire. 

_Right?_

Her heel rolled, knee giving out to make way for the weight of gravity. With her face in the grass Jester kicked and thumped her head into the ground. “Balls!” 

“ _Our Empire Man haunting you again?”_ The Traveler asked, and Jester felt her cheeks heat up in frustration and shame. She’d wasted a better part of the week trying to scry on him. A wall, magical and strict, kept her from seeing him. Jester could scry on Veth, her mama, even her father….

It had scared her. Enough that she’d insisted on the pamphlet prank and working towards conjuring the temple for the last two days. “I wish we could--I don’t know--chop him up into little bits, and I’d bake him into a pie and- and-”

_“And send it to his mother?”_

_“_ And send it to his mother!” Jester rolled onto her back and stared up at the sky. “This temple is going to take a whole year, huh?” 

“ _It’s nothing in the grand scheme of forever.”_

Jester stuck out her tongue. “There’s nothing we can do about him till’ I figure out how he keeps getting past our magic?” 

_“I wouldn’t say nothing.”_ Borrowing other people’s faces had gotten Jester into trouble, that trouble had gotten her into Veth’s life, and Veth’s life had brought her to the idea of a temple. “ _I would say you should go with a milk maid’s face, or an old carpenter, something painfully human.”_

Jester watched a violet light wash over her hands. If you touched the wrinkles, the grey hair, or the old shawl of the crone’s disguise; you’d realize you were touching soft skin, curly hair with horns, and a well-woven green cloak. 

\---------------------------------------------

“There’s absolutely _nothing_ worth stealing in this town.” Jester said from the corner of her mouth. She was having a hard time walking to the Brenatto’s without making a scene, it would be too easy. She honed in on an apple cart with a squeaky wheel, a Crownsguard without a belt to keep up his pants, and many store front signs with meanings that could be changed with a subtle switching of the letters. She’d been in Felderwin three times, but Veth had been holding out on her. 

_“Not even little Veth? You wouldn’t steal her away from her dreary life?”_ The Traveler asked. 

“Only if her husband came too, he’s sweet.”

Jester waddled over to the Brenatto’s home and apothecary, doing her best to maintain the facade. It was a narrow building, previously built for medium sized creatures, and humble in its advertising. Through the window she could see Veth counting bottles on the shelves, and marking things down on a piece of parchment. 

Her friend startled when Jester entered, despite the bell affixed to the top of the door alerting her of a customer. It had hurt watching Veth hunch in on herself when they met, and it hadn’t gotten easier to see. “Sorry, my husband is busy right now-”

“Is his best, little-detective wife busy too? Hm, hm, hm?” Jester made her voice sound creaky and raspy, letting her accent lilt in towards the end. 

Veth’s face flushed, and she scrunched her nose. “His _only_ wife is here! Jester, leave!” 

Jester surveyed the rest of the shop, turning her head back and forth expectantly. “ _He’s_ here isn’t he?” 

“E-Ermendrude is not here.” Veth looked down to a square hatch in the center floor, right beside the counter. 

“ _We really need to work on how she lies.”_ The Traveler tutted, and Jester imagined he was shaking his head while he said it. 

“Aw, are you worried about him?” Jester pouted. “I promise you don’t have to watch me fight, and win, and then kill him.”

Veth rolled her eyes. “That face doesn’t work on me when you’re in your bag of bones disguise.” 

“Then I guess I’ll go kill him myself.” Jester did an imitation of tip-toes. 

“Stop! Fine! There’s a peephole in the backroom by the ovens!” Veth hissed at her, blocking the path to what Jester assumed was a cellar. The hatch door beckoned. “Just be fucking quiet! You’re going to die, and then I’ll die, and my husband will be dead too!”

The hatch door swung open, startling them both, and a head popped up from the hole in the floor. Jester had to almost cover her hands to keep from squealing in delight at the man she knew as Veth’s husband. He had curly, messy hair and glasses that looked like gigantic disks, on top of his forehead were black goggles. “Is everything okay, sweetie?”

_He’s even quieter than Veth._

Veth swallowed before responding, “Sorry about that. Was just ranting about grain prices with Miss- Uh, Miss Lavorre here…”

“Okay, alright,” Yeza looked up at Jester, and for a second she forgot she was an older woman. He shook his head, like he was admonishing himself, and then turned back to his wife. “You can close the shop if you need to…” 

“I’ve got it. I promise.” Veth smiled at him, and it wasn’t a lie. Jester had noticed Veth’s speech had softened; she was comfortable with him. He smiled back, waiting to be sure she was certain, and went back down below. 

All the air left Veth’s body as she rubbed her face and looked back at Jester. 

Jester shrugged and bounced on her heels. “Sorry, Veth.” She elongated Veth’s name as she said it. “So, about that peep-hole?”

“That looks so weird when you do that as an old lady.” Veth and her walked into the backroom to a broom closet next to the stove. It was a small home, even though it had been built for humans, but there was a halfling sized bed, a table with a glass bottle of dandelions, cabinets, and a broom closet with a hole in the floor to spy into the cellar. 

There were many, many jokes Jester wanted to make about the hole. She held back when she caught a look again at Veth's stern face. 

“All yours,” Veth whispered, and Jester could read a hint of agitation. “I thought you said you could spy on him from in the forest…”

Jester was used to that tone. Her mama used it too. But Jester had a temple to build, and a man from the Empire to destroy. There was too much on her plate to care about the doubt, the ever present and annoying doubt. 

Jester dropped her disguise, and peered into the darkness of the cellar as only herself. 

The man was young: that was the first surprise. She’d expected him to be a decaying human, like the same men who’d exiled her from Nicodranus. Jester could hear Yeza’s muffled movements from further into the cellar, but she could only see the top of the Empire man’s head and body. 

“What is his name again?” Jester asked. She needed him to turn, to just catch a look at his face. 

“Bren Ermendrud,” Veth said. “But, he’s been going by Caleb Widogast in town.”

Jester snorted. _Widogast? So fancy._

Widogast had a book in his hands, his back painfully straight, his feet on the floor, and an intensity that Jester had never seen someone pull off by sitting. It was like there were strings pulling every part of him into attention. He wasn’t scary looking at all; in the commoner’s beige clothes and stiff sit he looked like he didn’t belong, or that he was being scolded. 

“He looks squishy.” Jester wished she could reach down into the cellar and take him apart. Veth and Yeza were fooled, awed even by him. Jester had seen better, had watched her own mother put on every face and emotion imaginable to protect herself. Whatever held this man together was weak, like the apple cart with a bad wheel or the Crownsguard who forgot a belt. 

“Squishy?” Veth paced back and forth. 

“New plan.” Jester pushed herself up from the floor. 

“We had a plan?”

“We’re not killing him. Not yet.” Jester leaned to Veth’s level, placing hands on her knees in barely contained excitement. Veth narrowed her eyes at Jester, but the doubt couldn’t reach her. “I need to have fun with him first.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this was going to be a one shot. It was primarily going to be for widojest week and the alternate universe day.


	3. Inside The Book's Jacket

  
  


_Veth_

Veth looked at the fresh apple pick for today’s market; her mouth was dry and her stomach clenched into a fist. The sweetness of her wedding cake seemed far away, the flour and sugar that had coated her tongue and left stains on her husband's lips was a long forgotten dream. They’d been twenty years old, _were_ still twenty years old, and they’d expected to be dead. It made her wish she’d appreciated the cake more when they’d had it.

All the colors and smells of the orchard pick made Veth _itchy._ A scratch that had been with her since she was small. 

“For a bundle of five?” Veth asked the halfling man running the stall. Her own voice’s quietness was frustrating. He had not heard her; or he’d chosen to ignore her, because his eyes caught her’s, but then looked purposefully at another customer. 

_Did everyone in this fucking town see me return from the woods?_ Veth hadn’t planned on stealing today, but what harm could come from paying for five and getting six? The vendor was still talking to the other customer, letting Veth begin to spin the apple into her hand. She had come out of the forest, changed, cursed, and invisible. She needed to use that to her advantage. 

“Good sir, a silver for two dozen apples?” Ermendrud’s Zemnian, accented voice made Veth jump and she almost dropped the fruit. Ermendrud’s words could slide across a frozen pond, sharp as skates and finessed to get what he wanted. She turned to see him standing with his arms clasped behind his back. It was a nobleman’s stance even in his plain clothes. Veth looked down at her shoes, hoping he hadn’t seen her palming the fruit. His hand fell on her shoulder, and she felt a hate she’d saved for her dead brother and father. 

The halfling vendor looked Bren up and down. Veth held her breath. A silver for twenty four apples during a war? Ermendrud couldn’t be that presumptuous. “It’s four silver. Times are hard.” 

“How about two silver?” Ermendrud countered. “Times are indeed difficult. I may be a stranger in your town, but not to the truths of the world around me.” 

The vendor scratched the back of his neck, actually considering the offer. Veth wanted to scream at him, tell him that Ermendrud and his people were richer than the gods. The vendor could charge him fifty gold, a hundred even, and it wouldn’t matter. “Three silver.” 

Ermendrud leaned down to Veth. The vendor had not associated the two till now. “Choose which ones you and Yeza would prefer.”

“Wait- You’re a friend of Yeza’s?” The vendor asked Bren. The vendor had chosen not to see her. “I can round that to two silver and five copper. Yeza does good work when the hay fever starts to spread.” 

Bren looked up from where he was kneeled next to Veth, and he smiled his infuriating and tailored smile. “ _Danke._ ” 

\-----------------------------------

“I can pay you back.” 

“No need,” Ermendrud said. He had decided to walk her back to the house, explaining that he would be observing Yeza for most of the day. “You fixed my coat. I have other things that need trimming and hemming-- if you are worried about indebtment.” 

Veth bit her bottom lip. Jester had asked her to get information out of Ermendrud, but everytime the opportunity arose Veth felt her cowardice hold her back. “Sir, uh, Widogast?”

“Yes?” His aggravating head tilt nearly made Veth lose her nerve. 

“Have you-” Veth cleared her throat. “Any news about that blue lady?” She rushed through the words, blurring ‘blue’ and ‘lady’ together. It sounded bad to her own ears. 

“ _Blau…_ Yes, the tiefling woman.” He looked ahead at the road, his eyes getting lost. “I’m sure you know about the pamphlets.” Veth held her breath. She could avoid lying poorly if she said nothing at all. “But, I suspect you and your husband have nothing to fear.”

Veth wanted to push, but she could not find it in her. 

_I’m sorry, Jester. This just isn’t for me._

_Why does that make me sad?_

Weirdly enough, it was Ermendrud who continued talking. “I hope you know I don’t normally haggle with vendors like that.”

“Uh-”

Ermendrud continued. “I plan to pay the full amount later--anonymously, of course. It would draw too much suspicion if I appeared loose in my finances. I meant no disrespect to you, or Felderwin.”

_Shit, shit, shit, shit. He’s a mind reader!_ “Haha...where’d you get that idea?” 

“I’ve seen a few things around the bend. Have not spent my whole life in the Assembly, or Rexxentrum.” 

Veth blinked back her shock. Assembly mages came from nobility. To even _vaguely_ imply that he was less than that was dangerous. That little amount of vulnerability made her stomach clench. “I guess, thank you.” Had he gotten younger in the span of a sentence? Veth could have sworn he had.

“Going forward I want there to be trust between us.”

“Y-Yeah, trust.” Veth's throat was closing in on itself. 

When they arrived home, Veth realized her knuckles had gone stiff from clutching her skirt. She kept watch on Ermendrud the entire time after that: his look of happiness when Yeza invited him into the back living area for a refreshment, or the way he then helped put the apples in the cupboard, or his gentle inquiry into how Yeza had been doing. 

_Nice doesn't mean good. Nice people can be evil. Wake up, Veth. Wake up!_ Veth caught herself sucking on a braid as she sat at the store counter. 

Yeza was growing less jumpy, Ermendrud made a joke and Yeza even _chuckled_. Veth considered that this might have been done on purpose. It was easy to hate Lady Derogna, her unfiltered sneers, and her at random check-ups. If this was an act, then it was working on her husband. 

_Jester’s going to get rid of him. Then it will be over, and you won’t have to think about it._

She flinched, hearing the muffled chuckle of her husband responding to another of Ermendrud’s jokes. 

\-----------------------------------

  
  


_Bren_

He’d looked down at his book, _Theories of the Lost Ziedel_ , and then back up to see Yeza leaned forward at his work bench. His arms were crossed, and his face was buried into his elbows. A slow, gentle rise and fall of Yeza’s shoulders made Bren wonder if he snored in his sleep. Bren slowly approached the man. The thin frames on his nose were being lightly crushed, so Bren removed them, the man stirred but did not wake to Bren’s touch. 

Vials of every shape and size decorated the scene of Yeza’s laboratory. Under the weight of Yeza’s arms and head, Bren caught sight of calculations on parchment he’d been doing. It was agitating how slow the progress was; Bren knew as much about the enigmatic purpose of the distillation as Yeza. A tripod device lay unopened, waiting for further instruction from the Capitol. 

The end goal was a potion; but the potion’s purpose was classified, their material given a code name, and their importance high enough to gain the attention of Bren’s master and figures like Derogna, Ludinus, and Tversky. All of these unknowns seemed to make Yeza fidgety, hesitant to go too far in his tests. At times Bren would catch Yeza with his hands on his hips, whispering to himself, attempting to use intuition to navigate a maze with a blindfold on and his ears plugged. Three weeks of this had gone by. Bren understood the fear of Yeza leaking the information, but felt the heavy weight of being left in the dark too. It made the task of protecting the Brenattos that much more of a punishment. 

Yeza Brenatto mumbled in faint Halfling, readjusting his head against his arms. 

_They’re only six years younger than you. An entire world apart, though._

Bren looked about awkwardly, unsure of the right course of action. It would be rude, demeaning even, if Bren picked Yeza up and carried him back from the cellar. Bren instead trotted up the stairs to find Veth Brenatto and take his leave. He was there to monitor them, not coddle. They were six years younger than him, but they were assets to the Assembly. They were not his students, and to think of them that way was wrong. He pushed the homesickness down.

Veth was not in the main storefront, from the window Bren could see her curled in a rocking chair on the home’s porch. A silver flask glinted in her hands, and Bren watched her throw her head back, taking a deeper drink than he thought possible for a woman who stood eye level with his waist. She wiped her mouth on her arm and looked up at the lantern near the door-frame, she appeared mesmerized by the moths circling the light. After a long sigh, she started undoing her braids. 

He felt shame. The vulnerability made his stomach twist. Bren pushed on the door, his guilt increasing as Veth dropped the second braid she’d started to unwind. “Herr Brenatto is asleep. I think it best for me to take my leave.” 

“Of course, of course,” Veth said. Bren could smell the cheap liquor from the flask. “Have a nice night, Sir Widogast. See you tomorrow.”

Bren paused at the bottom step and turned back to face Veth. He’d meant to leave, but could not bring himself to go without trying again to make peace with her one last time. “You are welcome to assist.” 

“Um...”

“I saw you, trying to catch a look of the work when your husband opened the hatch. You and Yeza don’t appear to have many friends, or family. I’m sure there is no harm in you observing the tests.” She seemed bright, just like her husband. He wondered what the next course of action was if the Brenatto's finished the potion. If this was successful, then a home in Rexxentrum could be arranged, someplace much safer and away from the trauma he knew they'd undergone. 

Veth’s face scrunched with displeasure. “Yeza has _plenty_ of friends _and_ family.”

“Always quick to defend him.” _But never yourself._ Bren hated the forced simpering, the false meekness, the eyes trained toward the ground. It was like she was purposefully smothering herself. “I am still eager to hear how you escaped the goblins.”

“I threw acid in their faces and ran. There, happy now?” She started curling in, pulling her legs to her chest. That was even more curious to him, that she would not just escape, but attack her captors. It was abnormal for most people--most halflings--in that situation. 

“You did an incredible feat. It is not my place to say, but I believe you would benefit-”

“Fuck you.” 

Bren stuttered. “ _Wie bitte?”_ He lapsed into Zemnian, and had to right himself. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, do you?” She slurred her words towards the last sentence. “You think you’re clever, with your fuckin’ ‘hairs’ and ‘frows’.”

“But those are your titles. I am only trying to make this process comfortable.” He was under no illusions that the circumstances were good, if even desirable. Bren was not here by choice, and the Brenattos might as well have been conscripted into the work. Bren held up his hands, trying to placate her. “I mean no offense to you, or your husband. Your work for the Empire is important.”

Veth Brenatto squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them she was crying. The script Bren was reading from could not fit, and he felt lost in the view of her sorrow. “Please, just, go away.” 

“Frau Brenatto-”

She ran into the house and he was left there on the front step. 

\-------------------------------------------------

His master was right. As Bren walked through the dark streets of Felderwin, he craved one of their talks. The kind after a long day of study, or training, where they could sit together in his master’s study, pour two glasses of wine, and analyze the world they inhabited. 

“ _The people of the Empire are good Brennen,”_ His master would say, trusting Bren enough to relax. Bren had realized this level of casualness was not gifted to his master’s other pupils: Astrid, Eudowolf, Jijaa, or any of the others. “ _But, they are simple. It is a shame. They will never fully understand what we sacrifice for them.”_

Three weeks of prowling these streets like a trapped animal had Bren weary, and now the Brenatto wife and her small mindedness had pushed him over the edge. Other anxieties bubbled up. 

_Had the Crownsguards done anything about the colorful propaganda? No, of course not--they threw the papers away without investigating, dissecting the problem. Incompetents everywhere_. _They’re going to let that woman get away with it; just like the Harvest Festival. No one wants to look, see, confront these issues._

“ _They are cattle, most toil their lives away never touching, or even realizing, the forces that have risen above them. Very few have the glimmer I saw in you when we first met, Brennen.”_

Bren stopped his walking and listened, he’d been lost in his thoughts. Summer-night air with cicadas punctured the silence. It was a little after midnight, and the streets were empty. He should be alone. He started walking again, and immediately heard the extra echo of footsteps. Bren veered from the route to the house, but the footsteps stayed with him. 

He boldly stopped this time, and turned to face whatever was behind him. A few lit lanterns cast wide shadows on the cobblestone and buildings. He’d taken a route away from his house, away from the Brenattos, and away from some of the more populated areas. Bren spoke levelly into the darkness, “I’m going to assume you don’t know who I am; if you did, you’d realize that witnesses are what garner my sympathy for pickpockets.” 

Bren held his breath, and started to channel magic to his hands and body, reaching for the instinctual patterns and lessons woven into his mind. He hoped it would not come to that; he could not afford alerting Crownsguards of Assembly presence if this went sour. It would cause rumors, and forces against the Crown would know Felderwin held secrets. 

From within his head he heard the stalker respond through a spell, similar to the Sending-Stones he had invented. “You’re really, really, really good at pretending to be scary.” 

Bren had to swallow the initial disbelief. It had to be her: the blue devil, the trickster, the woman who worshiped an angel in irons. The weight of his failure and displeasure dissipated. The woman who occupied a space in his head was here. _Physically here_. She was not trapped in his frustrations, or the locket. 

Bren’s arms itched. The voice was high, airy, accented, and unsettling in how playful it was. He cleared his throat, and began to slowly walk towards the shadows where he believed she could be. 

His hands were still warming, but if he timed it right he could catch a glimpse of her. Bren called into the dark, “It doesn’t appear so, you don’t sound frightened at all, _sheda._ ” 

“Aw, you made a nickname for me. My name is Jester, in case you were wondering, Caleb.” She elongated the name he’d taken undercover, and he felt a chill go down his back. She was gloating. He had to shake his head free of the way she pronounced the alias-- _Cayleb_. If she was using distance-communication spells she could be miles elsewhere, and one of her agents was watching him instead. His heart sunk at the idea of her not being close, that this was another missed moment in their history that had begun to form. “Hey, look behind you.” 

Bren turned, instinct taking over, and projected his arcane shields as a...gigantic lollipop crashed through the barrier of runes surrounding him. He stumbled backwards from the floating, spectral weapon. It had an iridescent glow to it, lighting up the street a bit in the violet light. It was paradoxically sweet and terrifying. 

_Spectral weapons originate from the magic that chosen holy possess-_

The weapon swung at him again, not _yet_ hitting, but making Bren fall onto his back. It had been too long since his last fight, and he was struggling to keep pace with his mind’s analysis of the situation, and the commands needed to spell cast. The weapon swung down again, this time grazing his shoulder. He hissed in agony, the benign lollipop had _crushed_ into his bones. A vision of her soft, lamb’s face flashed behind his eyelids; then the fangs under her lips woke him up. Bren moved his hand in a circular motion, and the weapon vanished as his magic counteracted and defused her spell. This would give him time to build up his defenses. 

“Cheater!” She-- _Jester, if that even was her real name_ \--yelled out. This was not a sending spell, but her actual voice. She was thirty feet away, maybe a little more. He could not believe her carelessness. Bren rose to his feet, clutching his shoulder with one hand, and began to channel his next spell with the other. Most mages were at a disadvantage with only one hand casting, but Bren had prepared for these scenarios. If she was so easily agitated by his dispellment, then what else could get under her skin?

“Where is your god, little one? He sends you to die for him? I was eager to finally meet this wandering Traveler.” He wanted to say more, mock her for believing that she could destroy the lives of so many people without interference. He kept it simple, though, enough to allow him to set the runes in the air with his hand motions, and pull out an open, clay paw with an eye etched in the palm. 

A bolt of light sprung out of an alleyway to the right, and Bren countered it with a raise of his forearm, still clutching the clay paw; his opponent was either very arrogant, or panicking. She had revealed her location, and he was closing in. 

If he caught her he could return home, proving to his master that he was worthy to be in the Volstruker corps again. 

_Do you want that?_ Bren crushed the thought. Unsure of where it had come from. 

_Focus. You can stop it from ever happening again. No one will go through what you went through._ He released the spell, and turned the corner. In the alleyway--clenched in an summoned claw that was taller and wider than three men--was the woman named Jester. She fought against its grip, and for the first time he was face to face with the person he’d spent the last ten months looking for. He was flooded with hope, something he hadn’t let himself feel for a while. 

Bren had considered a hundred scenarios for their first meeting. This was...too easy. He was panting, the pain in his shoulder pulsating. “You are supposed to be clever.” She snarled at him, still struggling in the paw’s grasp with her arms pinned to her sides. “Don’t struggle too much, _ja_? You’re in a precarious situation, best if you cooperate with me.”

“ _Nein_!” She spat back at him, doing a mockery of his accent. He’d thought he’d moved past the anger that came when people took jabs at his struggles with the Common language. 

“You know a little Zemnian? Good for you.” Bren raised his hand and squeezed the clay paw, ordering the larger counterpart to do the same to his captive. She screamed, like something frightened and something furious, and Bren faltered in his cruelty. 

_Smoke, screaming, wrong house-_

Jester’s face changed from fearful to determined, and in the tongue of devils she cursed at him again. A cold worse than death spread across his body, and spots danced in his vision. “ _Schnee?”_

\-------------------------------------------------

  
_Jester_

Jester landed onto the cobblestone atop her knees and elbows, the summer-night heat turning her Hellish Rebuke’s gentle snowflakes into puddles. Jester took in a deep breath, the gigantic paw had disappeared. She then whipped her head up, remembering that the fight wasn't over. 

There were icicles jutting from the ground that pierced through the Empire man’s lower stomach, near his thigh, They appeared unaffected by the heat, staying solid and emanating cool into the warm air. She remembered her mother’s lesson on their inheritances as tieflings. “ _The world can be so cruel, my little sapphire. If they hurt you, though, never forget that I have given you a way that will make them regret it.”_

Her mother’s Rebuke was fire; Jester’s was ice. It was a gift from her father too. 

Jester slowly rose to her feet, the ground slippery from the snow. She held out her arms, half to keep her balance and half like she was taming a skittish horse. “Mr.Empire man?” She asked, terrified that the half impaled figure, slumped backwards and held aloft by her icicles, was dead. “Caleb?” She asked again. 

He whimpered. His eyes were closed and the shallow way his stomach moved appeared to hurt him. But he made a noise, meaning he was alive. One issue resolved, Jester thought. 

And then she heard a window opening, and some commotion outside the alleyway. Three more problems appeared. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit.”_ Jester whispered, backing away from Caleb and looking around for a place to cast her escape portal. The Dimensional Door was a hijacked skill, harnessed by the Traveler from what he called ‘the wilds’ and passed to her. It had saved her life multiple times, and had also saved Veth’s. 

She looked back; the man from the Empire hadn’t died yet, but if someone didn’t heal him soon-

“ _It looks like you’re holding all the good cards, maybe now’s a good time to explore his house when he’s in no position to pull anymore of his stunts.”_ The Traveler was right, but she couldn't leave him to be found like this. Jester bounded over to Caleb. 

“I’m- I can’t take you with me if you don’t want to go,” Jester whispered, hearing the sounds of confused people in town approaching, soon they would find them. She wrapped her arms around his torso and he shuddered, pulling in any direction that was not near her. Blood dribbled down his lip and he cried out again. Jester pulled him closer, avoiding the sharp spike of the icicle “Please- We need to go, and I can heal you! You just have to say yes to teleport with me.” 

“Promise…” He rasped. “Don’t-”

“Got it! I promise!” Jester felt the magic of her Dimension Door pull them both from the ground. There was no time to find out what he wanted her to promise, and really no time for her to care. The twisting sensation of teleportation spiraled them, straightening them out in a street closer to his house. They were still too far, though. “Just a little more, Mr.Widogast. Hold on!”

Jester cast the spell a second, and then third time. The drain on her could be felt in the sudden silence from the Traveler. She started humming, clicking her tongue to keep her distracted from the man who was slung over her shoulder, his blood all over her clothes, and the fact that he’d stopped making pained noises. She was terrified to stop moving, even to shift him and carry him in both her arms would be too much. 

_Why did I do this?_ She asked herself these questions too often _._ Why had she gone looking for her father? Why had she disguised herself as her mother and lured Lord Sharpe, naked, onto a balcony in the middle of a busy Nicodranus day? 

She saw the house and hurried towards it, being careful to step over his arcane alarm that Veth had said was near the first step. 

His front door was locked. Jester adjusted Caleb, scrunched her nose, and kicked the frame. It bent forwards, but did not break. She kicked again, pleading with it. The door gave way a bit and Jester rushed it for a third time. 

The Empire man’s house didn’t look very special. It had the same beige, plain, boring atmosphere as his coat and disguise clothes. Most Felderwin residents decorated their porches with flowers, wreaths on their doors, rocking chairs, and other quaint little things. Caleb had nothing, it looked un-lived in, untouched from the outside. Inside was the same case, Jester had to shift him onto the small cot that was his bed. She ripped open his shirt, targeting where he’d been impaled. Blue light poured out of her fingers, and the wound began to close, skin piecing together and the discoloration or yellow sickness fading away.

“You’re going to feel better real soon, I promise real soon. You’re going to wake up and it’s going to be so funny-” The wound left behind a faint scar, and his chest had started to rise and fall again. She paused, pulling away. She’d ripped open the shirt, not paying attention at first, but now she saw them. There were scars everywhere. The biggest was in a v-shape going from his clavicle to his bellybutton, with large tick-marks. 

_Sutures. Like on a quilt._

Around his neck were also two necklaces. The first had a charm of amber pieced together by gentle ribbon tied in a rope like fashion. The second was a much heavier chain; runes etched into a disk hung from it. She went to remove them, and found she could only get off the ribbon necklace. Magic made the chain necklace fluctuate, tightening around his neck as Jester tried to take it off. She pulled her hands away, nervous to wake him up by casting any more spells. 

"What are you, Caleb?"

Jester swallowed and began to pull off one of his heavy, leather gauntlets. He had bandages wrapped from finger to elbow, giving her one last chance to turn away from her curiosity. She wasn’t naive, and she’d seen a fair share of gore in the time from her leaving home and coming to the Empire, but she could not have prepared for the horror under the bandages. 

They were green, solid, and laid flat on both sides of his arm, embedded into the flesh so only a little of them shown like they were sinking underwater. They looked hard, like crystals. 

_You’d have to slice the arm open, get it in the muscle. You’d then have to heal the muscle around it-_

She looked around the dark house: one bed, one table, one chair, one window, a restroom, and a little kitchen. The shelves were bare. There was nothing to indicate a person lived here. Surely, there had been enough time to have some of his fancy belongings transported to his house. The house was small, like a cell. 

_He has to have fancy things. He lives in Rexxentrum. He’s a fancy mage. Veth said he rode in a carriage._

When Jester was eight years old, the Traveler taught her how to sneak into the Chateau's guest rooms. Their adventures hiding in the maid’s laundry baskets became more elaborate as the years went on, but they started there. She loved going through the guests possessions, seeing what their lives were like, putting on their jewelry, or their hats while they were exploring a city she wasn't allowed to be in. She had hoped to sneak into his house while he was away with the Brenattos, but she hadn’t. She had then thought to spook him while he walked home, but she started a fight instead. 

She slipped off his boots, then she draped her cloak over him. A few times he flinched in his sleep, but still remained dreaming. 

Jester sat on the bed beside the mage, it dipped with her weight and under his breath he mumbled. She froze, expecting his eyes to fly open, but they stayed shut. It was almost not the same man she had fought an hour ago. 

_“What a wretched sight he is.”_

Jester shivered, not used to the Traveler sneaking up on her. “He had me for a second, in the alleyway. I thought I was going to wizard jail....” 

“ _And of course you made a fantastic recovery. There is no greater victory than one that is a comeback.”_

“He believes in you.” Jester said. The Traveler paused, waiting for her to explain. “When we were fighting he started saying this stuff about you, like he really thought we were serious and special and something to be afraid of. Not even Veth thinks you’re a god, or mama, or dad. They just- I don’t know. And then when he got me, he really looked at me. Like he was all mad and stuff, but he saw us.” 

Jester looked down at the mage, some of the moonlight from outside the single window caught his still face. He hadn’t held back. She’d been completely unprepared for him to see her, to best her. He had won, and she had escaped because he had faltered for some reason. 

The Traveler paused. “ _And you enjoyed that feeling, that feeling of being seen.”_

She had. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far I've kept on schedule and posted a chapter every two weeks. I hope to continue that into August, but I assume that as work and school pick up that there will be slower update times. Till then, thank you to everyone who has left some phenomenal comments. These comments and thoughts mean the world to me.


	4. A Slowly Shifting Genre

  
  
  


_Veth_

She had yelled at Bren Ermendrurd, to his face. Where had it come from? Her splitting headache and the fuzzy taste on her tongue gave her a clue. 

Veth stared at the ceiling, watching the darkness turn into a blue morning. She began to roll out of bed before the sun had made it over the horizon line, but her husband reached for her. His eyes were still shut, his glasses on the nightstand. Seeing this, she turned back to sit on the edge of the bed to hold his hand. 

It was still strange: to be waking up, getting dressed, going down to the shop. Their monotony maintained itself despite goblin raiders and The Cerberus Assembly laying siege to their world. “Yeza?”

“Hm?” He squeezed her hand back in response. 

“I think it’s one of those days for me,” she said. “I’ll be back sometime this afternoon.”

“You want me to go with you?” He asked and raised his head to look at her. Guilt was a fixture in Veth these days. Her husband was an inquisitive man, and yet he refused to push her, dissect her lies. She hadn’t told him what Jester looked like, an oversight that had saved her when Ermendrud waltzed into their lives. She had been so _close_ , too. She had just begun to feel ready to tell him, explain why she needed this.

“No, no, the shop needs you,” she said, shaking her head at him. “You’re becoming pretty essential to Felderwin.” 

“And you’re sure this woman isn’t uh, a bandit?” 

Veth snorted, imagining Jester wearing a large hat and misfiring a pink crossbow. “She’s too loud.” 

Yeza smiled, but looked down. He absently smoothed out the sheets. “I saw you got the flask out again.Can your friend help you with that?” 

She kissed him on the forehead and got out of bed. “I’ll bring it up.” 

There was a heavy pressure on her throat. Yeza rolled over and mumbled, “I’m glad you made a friend.” 

Ermendrud had been right; even before the goblin attack she and Yeza had few others but each other. Yeza was known, and relied upon, but did not spend his mornings talking to field hands or farmers. She noticed how after returning from the forest, their neighbors started handling him with a softer tone, at least. It would have pleased her, if not for the fact that their kindness came from acting like she had died. 

  
  


Veth dressed, braided her hair, and grabbed a few apples. She paused, remembering that Ermendrud had purchased them, and then switched them out for a loaf of bread. 

  
  


She was not dead. She was right here to protect Yeza. And so, when she watched her husband naively smile around Ermendrud, she did not like the warnings of her intuition. She wanted to blame it on jealousy, something petty like a wife not enjoying her spouse spending too much time at work. 

_You know it’s not that. You’re a bad liar even to yourself._

Jester would take care of it. One of her ludicrous plans would pull through. 

  
  


Veth walked into the morning air, pulled her hood up, and took in a deep breath. And if Jester failed, Veth could burn bridges herself if she needed to. Jester had opened up avenues to her, and she could walk them on her own.

A tap on her shoulder announced the presence. Nobody was behind her, but the pressure was unmistakable. 

“ _You are a creature of such little faith.”_ His voice was smooth and uncharacteristically sweet like a headache--or that might have just been her hangover. Ermendrud had a similar way of weaving his words. But, Veth could hear a difference. It was subtle, and Veth couldn’t exactly name it, but with Ermendrud she could imagine at one point in his life he had been a child; with parents, maybe siblings too. Ermendrud had to be taught how to act, and if his admission of less nobility was true, then he had done a good job of it. 

Veth could not imagine any domesticity or humanity for the disembodied voice named, The Traveler. 

Jester had to keep the worst company it seemed. All these months of their partnership and Veth couldn’t find a way to tell Jester that she hated this-- _thing_. 

“Up before noon? Incredible.” Veth retorted. It wasn’t a god, and it certainly was not a man. Veth loved Jester, but she only had so much patience for her pet weirdo. “Are you just here to mock me? Or do you need something?” 

She kept walking, waiting for whatever quick witted jab it had for her. After a long pause it chuckled and began to lecture. _“You’re smart enough to know you couldn’t find her without me. I am her sole valet.”_

“Oh, fuck off.” An older human woman whipped her head up to look at Veth, who awkwardly hurried away when she realized she’d been heard. “There goes any shred of my reputation in this place.”

_“Tiny woman in her tiny town,”_ he hummed on the way into the woods. No Crownsguard stopped them, and no one looked at the halfling woman slipping across the shallow part of the stream. She used the rocks as stepping stones, holding her breath the entire time she crossed. “ _Tiny husband, tiny house; running from the cat, is a tiny mouse.”_

Veth stopped, knowing the next part was going to be uncomfortable. Not painful or deadly, but still taxing. She looked ahead, no dirt path and no consistent markers on a treeline dotted by pine and spruce. It was still early morning, but the heat and dust made the cicadas chirp. Veth wondered what way she would prefer to die in the woods: goblins or heatstroke. 

“ _Are you going to only appreciate it? Or will you walk the path?”_

“I don’t understand how it’s still scary during the day time.” Veth tried to stand tall, an impossible feat for a halfling. 

“ _Only the powerful can masquerade under the light.”_

Veth had no way to respond. She stepped off the riverbank, and into a wooded area. It wasn’t the same one the goblins had taken her and Yeza through. 

_Right?_

There was no clear, consistent route to Jester’s camp. Veth would walk for a time that the Traveler felt necessary, and then she would be just-- _be there_. The journey never even looked the same. This was the toll. The trees grew long and exaggerated like a cartoon, things moved just out of the corner of her eye, and the sky was _too_ blue. She shivered and yelped each time. The tricks never grew old; and unlike the foliage, she never changed. 

The world was tilted during her trip. On one occasion she had thrown up. The colors, the vibrancy, the ever reaching forest as it shifted from path to path. And her husband wanted to come with her? 

_No, he couldn’t. He would be terrified. It would hurt him. You can’t bring him back to the place where he brushed up against death by goblin horde. I can’t believe they built a town right next to this hell._

The Traveler laughed the entire time. “ _A little tough love, my dear. You can’t be afraid of these woods forever. You’ve lived next to them your entire brief life.”_

Veth would then pick up pace, starting to run, giving into the energy her feet often tried to sweep her into.

The Traveler made the bushes shuffle and thrash. She turned to look over her shoulder once, slipped on mud, and landed face first into a person sitting on a picnic blanket in a clearing. 

And like that it was over. She had made it. 

“Veth!” Jester squealed. Veth had to lift her head from against her friend’s dress, shaking with anger. Also in Jester’s lap was a paint tray and paper bound with wax. 

“Tell him to stop!” Veth squeezed Jester’s arm, avoiding knocking over a mug of colored water and paintbrushes by her foot. “Every time he does that! And he knows!”

Jester’s face morphed from confusion to realization. “Traveler! You’re supposed to go slowly when you take her through the Feywild path!”

“ _But I don’t like to linger there…”_ He had the audacity to sound chastised, like he was pouting. Veth had to bite her bottom lip to keep from cursing at him. 

Jester winced as Veth hardened the grip on her shoulder. “See, Veth? He was just as scared as you.” 

Veth paused. There was something off. “You okay?”

Jester blinked a few times, and then quickly closed her sketchbook, hiding it from Veth, and trying to nonchalantly shrug. “Yeah! Just been doing a lot of stuff lately…”

Veth ran her tongue along her teeth. _Weird._

She almost hit herself for not noticing it. “You have a new necklace.”

Jester’s body went rigged and she shoved the necklace into the front of her dress. Before it disappeared, Veth caught its shape and amber color. “Jester, your face is going navy.” 

_Oh-_

Jester had said there were other disciples. Veth rubbed the back of her neck and shook her head in tandem. Being a priestess and courting your followers ? It was the type of indecent thing that Veth had never thought of, never believed could brush up against her bland world of chores. 

“You took down your tent?” Veth asked, not out of curiosity, but to change the subject. The incident of the necklace was forgotten, chalked up by Veth to be a topic for another time. Jester started grinning, rubbing the blush out of her cheeks. 

Veth had never seen someone in her whole life with such a wide and wicked grin. 

“I don’t need the tent anymore.” Jester gloated. 

“But-”

Jester leaped to her feet and began moving her hands. Veth covered her eyes, expecting the building to fall from the sky. When a few minutes passed she whispered, “...How long is this gonna take?”

Jester ignored her, but Veth noticed she did scrunch her nose and scowl a bit. Her hand movement slowed, and for a second Jester had to pause to get herself back into the steady rhythm of what she was doing. 

Fifteen minutes passed; then thirty, then an hour. Veth by that point had started to feel her head droop, the morning sunlight and the small hangover made her want to nap. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, and when she looked back into the clearing a proud Jester and a gigantic building stood before her. 

“ _Fuck_ , Jester.” Veth had to crane her neck to see the top of the monument. It was more home-like than a temple: there were tile shingles on the roof, windows with multi-colored glass, a porch with warm colored stone steps. “That’s steam coming from the roof...”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Jester’s forked tail wiggled back and forth. “It’s a bathhouse too!”

  
\--------------------------------------

_Bren_

He was confused. His spell books were still in the pocket dimensions of his coat, and Bren could feel their connection to his mind and body. 

_But they don’t allow you to use your magic at the home...It scares the madam, and you’re already on thin ice with the Academy._

They had kept him in a home for boys for four months, three hours, eleven minutes, and seventeen seconds. He had counted. He never forgot. For his own safety, they had explained. Only momentarily, while they investigated if Una and Leofric had any associations with the group whose name Bren did not know of. 

They promised that once all was clear--and there was no risk of scandal--he could return to the Soltryce Academy. Despite him having no other family or good breeding, he was a diligent student, a well behaved young man, and incredibly understanding of the situation. Headmaster Margolin had been gentle with the news, respectful even. 

“ _Am I in trouble?”_ Bren had asked, over and over. No one answered him, and the Headmaster had given him a pained smile. Then they had him change out of his academy uniform in private, and he had left the school grounds’ in the dead of night. Like a thief. 

He dreamed about it, and he dreamed about it often. It sometimes bled into when he slept in an unfamiliar place. 

When Caleb awoke, for a moment he believed he was back at the home for boys. He was sore, tired, and disoriented enough that he had to push back the wave of shock that came at seeing a green cloak draped over him. 

The night prior didn’t come back to him slowly; it slammed into him in all its clarity. He had faltered, and he had paid for it. 

_Oh, please. Dawnfather, please no._

He was back in the house the Assembly had given him. _She knows where you live_. 

He patted his chest; his shirt was open, his boots off, and his coat folded on a chair. The bandages on his arms were all wrong too; surprisingly wrapped correctly, but not by him. She had made the ends into ribbons, a decorative bow was on both his knuckles. 

He threw off the cloak, and stumbled to the washroom, He hit the door frame on the way in and had to lean on it for stability. He had kept the mirror covered till now, not wanting to see any of Una’s face on his own. He yanked the tarp off the mirror and turned. He was straining his neck to see the scar that was on the back of his lower thigh, and that matched another scar on the front of his torso. 

“ _Mist-”_ Bren cursed, taken aback at the realization that the icicle had pierced him from the back, and gone through to the front of his lower abdomen. He had been stabbed before; training accidents were common, and when operating as a Volstrucker it wasn’t the worst that could occur on a mission. 

He poked at the scar on his back, letting his finger trail it to the front. He winced, realizing he would have to continue a more thorough search of himself, to be sure there were no other injuries or adverse things done to him while he had been incapacitated.

_At least it’s just you. No pesky nurses, or any of your master’s researchers gossiping about you like a piece of meat._

He realized that the _Sheda_ \--Jester-- had been touching him, and he shuddered. He had been entirely at her mercy. Bren swallowed and began the search for further injury. He raised each arm easily, pressed on his stomach and chest to deduce breaks or internal bleeding, even pulled back his lips to check his teeth. He was fine, if not a bit sore, but overall nothing worse than what he usually came away with after sparring with his classmates, Astrid and Eudowolf. 

If Jester had pierced him a few inches closer to the stomach he would have died in minutes. At this thought, he made the poor choice of looking up at the mirror. 

He did look like Una. Even though neither of his parents had red hair, he still looked like his mother. He threw the cover back over the mirror, grabbed the green cloak, and almost ran into his cellar. A wild energy in his panic kept him from dwelling on his face; he was all too grateful for it. 

Relief shocked him when he saw his study was unmolested. His spell books were safe, and so was his work. He pulled out his chair and laid his head on the desk, breathing deeply to find himself again. Seeing his research safe sapped him of the manic drive keeping him up after his defeat. 

He found it strange, failure was too connected with death in his mind. He was not dead, though. A pile of new worries stacked in his head, though: who had found the snow left from their fight, how fast the gossip would travel, and what did this mean for the Brenattos ? Bren lifted the green cloak to the table, he needed to investigate something present to stave off the fear that was hitting him. 

It was the same one she had been wearing in the programmed image from the locket. Little details jumped at Bren; there was paint and chalk stains around the sleeve hems, it smelled like fresh soap, the material was a type of faux velvet. 

He had dipped in and out of consciousness last night. He had asked her to promise--promise not to hurt the Brenattos. Being impaled on the pike of an icicle had put things into perspective. Would she keep that promise? He wasn’t sure she had agreed, or even heard him. It was all so strange. 

He had felt her carry him. Bren could not deny it: he was touched, humbled even. He could deduce no ulterior method. This fact also scared him. He did not enjoy the idea of being ‘saved for later’. 

_She must have seen your surgeries._ He swallowed and rubbed at his arms, hoping to rub out the unwanted shame that came with that. He was so engrossed in the cloak, and why after healing him--no-- _saving_ him Jester had left it, that a Sending spell entering his head caused his hands to heat and nearly combust with arcane flame. He then pinched his nose as Expositor Lionett’s voice channeled into his mind. 

He was beginning to loathe Sending spells. 

“Have payment ready for me,” Bren rolled his eyes at this. “And be professional for once in your life. Some food would be nice, since you’re in Felderwin.”

“Well, you’re early.” Bren began to re-wrap his bandages, stopped, and decided to leave them as is.

  
\----------------------------------  
  


_Jester_

  
  


She hated the nights. Camping alone had been--daunting. Now, the echo of the empty temple was a whole new issue. 

“Maybe Veth and Yeza could move in.” Jester swished her feet in the indoor pond at the altar. “And Yeza could make bath salts. And Veth wouldn’t have to clean anymore. And you wouldn’t always have to stay with me till I fell asleep.”

“ _This forest is not a good habitat for your halflings.”_ The Traveler took a form more often when Veth was not around. Jester liked him that way, a ghost in a green cloak, instead of a shapeless voice. 

Jester turned onto her stomach, now swishing her fingers over the surface of the water. “If the forest is so dangerous for them,” Jester started lightly punching at the water. “Then why the fuck did all the halflings and other people build their big farm town next to it.” 

The Traveler raised a hand to his chin and said simply, “ _Hubris.”_

Jester rolled over again to stare at the ceiling. After a year the temple wouldn’t need her to cast the spell again. It would forever be here, and she could find ways to paint on the ceiling, buy new oils for the baths, build more rooms. 

Right now the temple had a statue, a few indoor ponds of holy water steaming like a bathtub, stone benches, and a canopy of pillows and blankets at the very end of it all in an alcove. The outside frame made it appear like a house, but the inside was still struggling to produce the atmosphere she wanted. 

Jester didn’t want a place you loathed to go, crouched on your knees, hands clasped in supplication. It would be great, fantastical, but not stuffy. The Traveler shared her concerns. 

One years’ time, recasting of the spell, and eventually their combined power could produce exactly what they wanted. This was a test of patience. 

Veth had been curious about the whole thing, asking the questions Jester hadn’t considered: where does the water come from; why are there so many dicks in the stained glass windows; why does it look like a house on the outside and a church on the inside; how do you expect people to get here?

_I don’t know!_ Jester had smiled and brushed it off. 

Then Veth had asked about Caleb Widogast. She was growing impatient with the wizard, worried about how close her husband was, and if that would make getting rid of him more difficult.

_I don’t know! I don’t know! I just wish my voice didn’t echo so much in this temple! I could have killed him, but it wasn’t the right time!_

Jester filled her cheeks with air and popped them, something to fill the space around the little lies she had let slip and pass between her and Veth. She reminded herself this was not exile. This was her in control. She had friends, resources, and her god. On cue the Traveler sensed her distress. “ _Maybe we should take a trip?”_

“But if we go too far and I’m not able to cast the spell at the same time tomorrow then-”

The Traveler was suddenly beside, he had a way of moving without doing so. Either the passage of time, or space, meant very little to him. “ _I was thinking more so we spy on your new fascination.”_

Jester felt her cheeks heat up. “He’s my new _nemesis_.” It felt right and true that there should be something standing in her way. If there were people who wanted to stop you, then that meant you were important. Before Veth arrived she had been drawing cartoons of Widogast and her fighting, some silly and some a bit more revering. She was only twenty four years and her story already had an epic rival. “And I just saw him _yesterday_!”

“ _No harm, no foul in a check-up.”_ The Traveler’s tone was gentle. And yet, it had the same little push in it that helped Jester impersonate her mother, trap a noble lord on a balcony, reveal to the whole city that the man was having a few side affairs after his big wedding. 

Had that really happened only a year ago? “I do wanna see if he kept his bandages.”

The Traveler under his cloak was faceless to her, say for his mouth and chin. He smiled. _“I thought so.”_ He held his hand out to her, letting her place her palm against his. The room, which Jester had insisted be brightly lit by torches and wall sconces, dimmed. The only light was between Jester and The Traveler. Slowly, the green glow from his cloak filled the room and they were in a new place. 

It was his house, now without the amber necklace, she could find her way to him. Jester hid her face behind her hands, an old habit from childhood spying on Chateau guests. He couldn’t hear her, see her, or know that he had failed to stop her spying. 

_“Who’s that?”_ The Traveler pointed to a woman close to Jester’s age, with sepia brown skin a bit lighter than Veth’s, hair pulled tight into a bun, and elegant jade and cobalt robes. By the front door was a staff with a dark, grey stone attached to the top. The woman was sitting nonchalantly, but the way she flexed her fingers made Jester nervous. The woman leisurely turned to survey the house as Caleb came into view with a pitcher of water, and Jester had to hold her breath. 

The woman seemed to look right at Jester, but then turned back to Widogast. “You should decorate more. Your cover could be blown by your neighbor, or one of those pockmarked teenagers you guys let be Crownsguards.” The woman poured herself a glass of water and drank deeply. Jester realized the woman had a weariness on her, on her shoes Jester could see worn soles. 

“When have you ever been concerned with my safety, Expositor Lionett?” Widogast retorted, and Jester realized this person was not his date, nor necessarily even friend. Jester made a face when she saw he had his leather gauntlets on. She would never know if he kept the bandages on the way she’d left them. Jester also cursed Scrying so late into the night. She could tell she’d missed a larger portion of the conversation. At least Jester was used to hearing only half the story, guests at the Chateau spoke the same way.

“I’m not. I’m more worried about the poor village idiot who sees something they shouldn’t.” With that statement, she pulled from a satchel at her waist a leather bound book. It was the size of a journal, from where Jester was she could see ribbons of bookmarks and dog-earred pages. “I want double the agreed amount if I share anymore.”

Widogast’s eyes went wide. This was the second time in two days that Jester had seen him look frazzled. “You hid this from me.”

“Exactly, I’m curious how far you’re going to go before you realize this is stupid. Or at least before you realize Ikithon doesn’t give a shit about you.” 

His eyes narrowed, and Jester felt a real fear. In the alleyway, or from the peephole at the Brenattos’ he had been all performative in his authority. This anger was not the case. 

The Expositor rolled her eyes. 

Jester felt bad for him, she would feel bad for anyone trying to talk to this person. The strange woman was letting him stew, reading every frustrated scrunch of Widogast’s nose. Jester could see his gauntlets starting to glow, she hadn’t realized there were runes on them.

“I’m not defecting.” He spat each word out slowly. “And I will be paying you the _original_ agreed amount.”

The woman raised an eyebrow, flicked her wrist, and the staff by the door flew to her outreached hand. She lazily twirled it. “Funny that you’d think we’d want you.” 

He cruelly laughed. “Oh, don’t pull that with me, Beauregard. I know Xenoth has been after him for years. Unlike you, I’m loyal to my mentor.” 

The Expositor kept twirling her staff, it made a wide and quick arc at her side. Using one hand she was able to twirl in in a circular motion, and just a little faster could make it break a bone. Jester’s nemesis and this woman had been doing this often. Their anger, their jabs, their quick negotiations; it was all ritualistic for them. 

After a time, the woman nodded her head to herself. “I’ll take an increased pay in the form of information on the halfling couple.” 

Widogast looked hungrily at the book. Jester had no doubt that if he moved any closer to it the Expositor would bash his head in with the staff. “I’m shocked you don’t already know.”

“Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”

Jester watched an entire array of emotions play across Widogast’s face before he stilled it, and brought it back to the controlled and impassive stance of before. “I will not do that.” Jester looked to the Traveler for his reaction, but he had gone invisible somewhere in the Scrying process. Caleb continued, seeing a skepticism on the Expositor’s face, “The couple, they are nothing. The Assembly chose them for they’re--ah, how do you say-- _bumpkinness_.”

_He’s protecting them._

Jester could see the faintest hints of a lie in the quick delivery and way he had covered up the first half of his answer. His fake disdain for them was the same tone he had used in some of his threats to her in their fight.

He had asked her to promise him--promise him something. It could have been about Veth and Yeza.

The Expositor held the silence, but then shrugged and pulled the book back into her bag. Caleb's face crumbled. “Fine. I’ll be back to check on you.” Jester and Caleb watched her reach his door, roll her shoulders, and turn back to give one last parting insult. “Ikithon still makes you wear that chain?”

Jester watched Caleb begin to reach for his neck, and then pull his hand down at the last second. “Do be safe, now, Expositor Lionett.” 

“You too, Volstrucker Ermendrud.” Jester had the feeling that whatever game the two had played had ended with her winning. When the Expositor left, Caleb let out a long sigh that had Jester feeling fidgety. The spell dissipated, and she was alone again in her temple. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday !


	5. The Companion's Origin

_Veth_

  
  


“How about we have Sir Ermendrud over for dinner?” Yeza had asked Veth innocently, hugging her from behind and nuzzling his request in the crook of her neck. She couldn’t find a way to tell him no. “I think he might be lonely, Vethy.”

Her husband--in his childhood--had been poor like Veth, frightened like Veth, and unyielding to play with the shifting goalposts set by their peers--just like Veth. And because of that, the Empire mage was now sitting at their table, looking too comfortable despite the fact that their cutlery was a size too small for him. He had bewitched her husband, and there was no reason in the world she could give to protect him from this charming villain. 

They had bread, a little cheese, potatoes, and then apples for dessert. Veth had to bite into her lip and tongue to keep from groaning at the amount they had to serve the large human. 

“Last harvest was a mess.” Yeza had spoken comfortably during dinner, and Ermendrud had nodded his head to show he was engaged in the conversation the entire time. Her husband was the one speaking, and yet he hung on every bit of recognition Ermendrud gave him. Veth had tried to find something interesting, a spiral or two, in the wood knots on their table. “I don’t know how we’ll meet our quotas this year.”

“I’m sure the Crown will understand. There is always Blumenthal to pick up slack.” Ermendrud looked at her; like he was expecting Veth to add somehow to the discussion, like he didn’t already know that she was an idiot who couldn’t keep pace. There were other places, other lands where wars were held, food was grown, magic was cast. But Veth had never been, and would most certainly never go. 

This was his way of punishing her for mouthing off to him. It had to be. 

“If you’re not busy, I’d love to run some recipes by you. It’s for the shop, but I would like to have someone review the work. If that’s okay.” Her husband rushed the last part of the sentence, rubbing the back of his neck. 

_You don’t need him._ Her husband was brilliant on his own. 

“Alchemical work is not my strongest field of study, but I would be delighted.”

_Who describes themselves as ‘delighted’? Gross._

Veth had started to daydream, when Yeza unknowingly pulled her back with a question that made the room colder, “Not that it’s my place...But that snow four streets down, by the Bramblecusps...was that-”

“I promise nothing that should worry you.” Ermendrud’s brow creased, a brief and faint enough agitation that her husband did not see.

Veth smiled shakily and began to clear the table. 

As night came and dinner finished, Ermendrud and her husband retired to the front porch to smoke. Veth shook her head, and yanked a washtub down from the cabinet, deciding that cleaning the dishes outside in the backyard could clear the static worry in mind. 

Jester had promised it would be okay. 

Veth grumbled to herself the whole way through the chore, the lukewarm water pruned her fingers. 

_Jester better hurry the fuck up._

From behind her, a presence made itself known with nothing more than a terse clearing of his throat. 

“Miss Brenatto,” Ermendrud said her name curtly.

Veth let the dish sink into the wooden washtub. For the first time in her life, Veth wished it had been the Traveler to interrupt her. She wiped her hands on her apron and turned. Could none of these mages, or strange creatures, find it within them to announce themselves without startling her? “No more fancy title for me?”

She winced at her own irreverence for the mage. There was no one to blame for it now, not even the alcohol. He was a good five feet away from her, standing at the backdoorway, with a bundle of cloth under his arm. Lantern light from inside her home cast his shadow, tall and reaching, on the grass. “You were displeased with my honoraries; so I stopped.”

“Can I-” Veth made her tone meek and helpless, like a Cerberus Assembly member would want. Though, it was too late for that. He had seen a piece of her when she lost her temper, and he was capturing more fragments by the second. “How can I help you? Do you need more tobacco?”

Ermendrud narrowed his eyes at her. Then, like he understood the last piece to a complex puzzle, he asked, “What did Derogna do to you?”

Veth swallowed. “How’d you figure?”

Ermendrurd stepped away from the door, he adjusted the bundle of cloth under his arm, and came right to Veth. He leaned down to her level, gently, and almost kindly. “Your husband no longer cowers around me. You persist in doing so. What did she threaten?”

“The usual, I bet,” Veth could joke, and Veth could deflect. Ermendrud did not break eye-contact. He blinked once, lazily like a cat. “It was nothing, really. The Empire has been good to us. ” Derogna had seen the opportunity in a hostage, but she had said it might not have to come to that if Yeza performed his duties well enough. Veth knew that a ‘maybe’ meant ‘no’; and a ‘might’ meant ‘in due time, but not now’. 

Ermendrud shook his head, pulled the cloth bundle from under his arm, and began to unravel the twine that kept it together. He was on one knee in front of her, “This is a gift for you.”

Veth twitched, shaking her head and about to push whatever it was away. She froze when she saw what he was handing her, the blade caught the light from inside her house. 

“This is out of left field,” Her hand hovered by the hilt. It was a beautiful thing: strong looking, not too big for her, and with something written in another language on the hilt. “Sir Ermendrud, I don’t know to use a sword, or how I would pay you back, or what the neighbors would-”

“With only a vial of acid you saved yourself-- and your husband,” Ermendrud bore holes in her with his attention. She realized, this close, that he had blue eyes and a bit of a crooked nose. She felt like she was standing too close to a bonfire; Jester was right, he smelled like a struck match. This close she could also see something else too; a faint weariness. He was more human to her now than he’d ever been. He had told her that he was not bred like the Assembly, but it took him kneeling before her for her to truly see it. “In time I hope you will find this more reliable than a vial of acid.”

Veth went to lift the sword, stopping herself when he thumb grazed the letters on its hilt. She instead took the sword and cloth from him, wrapping the weapon backup to be put under a bed alongside the strange rush of feeling she had when looking at the blade. “Thank you, but I still don’t know how to use it. And with you here--well, I’d be in the way.”

“I disagree.”

\----------------------------------

And his disagreement haunted her; this persistence he had could not be escaped. Veth dreamed of dead goblins, Jester at her side laughing, and defeated witches cowering before a sword that was in her hand. She rolled awake, giving in at an early hour of the morning and pulling out the bundle from under the floorboards of their bed. Yeza did not stir and only sighed in his sleep. 

Veth undid the string holding it hidden and closed, holding her breath and half expecting it to not be there. 

_Sell it, destroy it, or try and return it to him in the morning._

She did not want to go through with any of those options. She wanted that which she was not allowed to have. 

_Ermendrud said he could teach you._

In her experience, wanting more than she was allowed was dangerous. 

_When has that ever stopped you?_

Yeza had clasped a vial of acid into her hand, something he had lodged against his breast pocket before the goblins had grabbed him. Veth had shaken her head at him when he pulled away leaving her with it, knowing he probably couldn’t understand what she meant in total darkness. Torch light from a distance had kept them moving. The fear that when the goblins caught them again, that they wouldn’t throw them back into the box, nipped at their heels in the dark of the woods. They had just escaped, but Yeza--the ever pragmatic chemist--could see the brutal ending of their story. Veth didn’t think the acid was meant to be a weapon. 

Veth had wanted a long marriage, not something cut short in the woods. So when she fell behind, and threw the vial at the face of the goblin grabbing her, she had wanted her life more than she had ever before. 

She had never had the conscious feeling of wanting to live until she was backing away from the screeching goblin, his skin melting into his hands, and his comrades looking at Veth angrily. 

And from that, Veth’s wanting actually worked. She turned to run, and had collided into the knees of a taller creature. This creature in the dark had been holding a torch, smiling her wide and impossible grin; and had certainly not been there before. 

“Hi!” She had waved at the crowd of bewildered goblins who were looking at each other, their former leader still smoking from the acid, face down in the leaves. “I’m Jester!”

\------------------------------------------------------

_Bren_

After Expositor Lionett had left Bren, he had sat up from his sulking with a misplaced purpose to pull his coat on, and walk off his frustrations in the night air. An energy had been pooling in his hands, violent frustrations felt by all creatures who realize how small the confines of their cage actually are. 

He had almost missed the impostor button in his anger, but his nagging, infallible memory spotted it. 

_Brown?_

It was brown. It had been tortoise-shell colored before he had given it to Veth Brenatto for tailoring. He had passed off the coat to Veth easily enough because he had not attuned it yet to have multidimensional pockets, secret holsters, a dagger, his weapons. 

It had been just a coat then. 

_You’re doing it again. You’re seeing fires and enemies where there are none._ He had repeated that to himself, sinking back down into the chair at his table, holding the coat sleeve. _Your name is Brennen Aldric Ermendrud. In the last few weeks you have undergone a severe amount of stress, and are now trying to grab at patterns that aren’t there to find some misguided strength in your circumstances._

It had been miraculous that Veth Brenatto had escaped her goblin attackers...So very miraculous. 

He _could_ rip it from her mind; terrorize her and her husband. There would be no repercussions for acting the part of the jailer that he was. 

_It will not come to that._

So Bren had laid the seeds for Veth Brenatto. He had been potentially a little heavy-handed with the sword, the gentle faith in her, and the dramatic unwrapping of the weapon. She had looked at him with barely hidden awe. 

No one had ever looked at him like that. 

He faltered in his suspicions, but remembered himself. He remembered that faltering had almost led to his death at the hands of that insane heretic. Faltering had also...Well, among other things it always led to harm. 

From there he would earn Veth’s trust, confirm that she was who she said she was. If a sword failed, then he would try a spell book, a crossbow, a rune-necklace, or a shield. Bren had found that, contrary to the waxings of poets, most creatures never yearned for a break in their normalcy. Very few genuinely wanted to leave behind the safety of a loop. 

It was unclear what Derogna had done to assert her control of Veth, but Bren assumed her threats were laced with the usuals: loss of family, danger to her husband, a disruption to the comfortable pattern. 

Bren would take a different route, and dangle that which Veth Brenatto wanted more than anything: agency. And if nothing came of it-- if the button was just a button--he would still come out with the loyalty of both Brenattos. 

_This is ludicrous._ Everytime Bren had tried to suss out Veth during dinner, she had looked shy and frustrated. Had Jester, the sheda woman, done something to his mind? Had losing the fight dislodged the stitching his master had done? 

Bren could not return home after the dinner with Yeza and Veth. He found himself wandering again. His feet took him where his mind was stuck. An hour of walking and he realized he had returned to the alley where it happened. 

The snow had melted quickly, but not quickly enough to stop children in the morning from sticking their tongues against the icicles, and force Crownsguards to chase away onlookers who moved slowly by. The alleyway now looked plain. It was no different from the rest of Felderwin. 

He ran his hands over the walls, the familiar lack of evidence or trace of her left a taste in his mouth. 

_You took my anti-divination amulet. That could not have been your end goal, sheda. You were sloppy, gloating and casting spells from your hiding spot. You didn’t even search the rest of my house._

_What if you’re watching me now?_

Bren’s hands curled and uncurled. He pulled a broken milkcrate out from against the furthest part of the ally. He sat, leaning against the alley wall, and waited. Fifteen minutes passed. Bren refused to pull out his books, if she was watching then she might try and decipher them. What he was doing, he could imagine the look of displeasure on Eudowolf’s face, was playing a patience game. An irritating one for both parties, hopefully. 

This woman was deft at infecting him with hope. His hand went to clutch his side. She had marked him--his body and his mind. He was willing to wait hours if he had to. 

His patience had gone through the crucible of his master. Bren could technically contact Jester first, admit that waiting for her in the alleyway they fought in was vain; it implied that she would also be thinking of him. 

_You’re not some forlorn mutt staring at Astrid across the classroom, you idiot. She’s a heretic for a malevolent god. You are an instrument of the Empire._

Bren grimaced, realizing he was inadvertently pulling Astrid to his drama as a twisted comparison. 

But, on cue from some divine comedy, magic began to filter into his head from a Sending spell. 

“You’re so boring, Caleb. If I was an evil wizard I would be the most _special_ evil wizard in the world. You’re boring, and should-”

He paused. Bren now had to goad her. His crazy plan had worked, but more than that he felt a sort of haughty victory at the assumption that he could occupy her thoughts as much as she did his. “And you have practice? Being evil? How do you do it, because I would love to learn your ways.”

Bren was shocked by her lack of patience, and the haste in which she cast Sending again. Bren imagined her pacing while ranting at him, “This is serious, Caleb. But you’re also _not_ funny. Being smug doesn’t mean you’re _clever_. As I was saying, you should try and do more-”

Her accent was odd, nothing like anything this far inland. It was lilting, with rolling r’s. The spell kept cutting short. She was spending words too quickly, an extravagant creature spending magic enough to indicate she was not nearby. She would not be fighting him again. He rubbed his tongue over his teeth and curled and uncurled his hands. 

He had...expected something else from her. It had not been the sing-songy voice she used, or the cloak she had left for him. In fact, thinking of their fight, she had not used the spells common to the Angel of Iron’s ilk. The eye-witness accounts rambled about horned leaders, tieflings and devils with an air of superiority--that at least somewhat fit the description of her. There were stories coming from the farthest reaches of the Empire--bloodlust and carnage that always started simple too; small omens first, and then the flood. That only half fit the description of her.

_If she is a real priestess of the Traveler and Iron Angel, then why, why does she still masquerade under the benign with me?_

But not all bloodthirsty creatures danced in the night; the worst of the worst feel no shame under the light. Not all evil had the same execution of cruelty. 

His stomach and heart clenched. The chain around his neck tightened. He had begun to lose himself in the illusion of this woman’s playfulness, forget the smell of smoke, leave behind the spirits he had promised to put to rest. She had saved him because she was cruel, playing with her food; she had healed him so she could use him later. 

Bren said back to her through the spell, now bitter and ashamed, “Speak more carefully. Since I’m so boorish and beneath you; I need to listen carefully to your sage advice, _sheda_.” 

A long pause followed. He cursed, realizing he had offended her. That was always the issue with Sending spells: whoever got the last word was never guaranteed a victory in the verbal spar. He stood up from the crate, and her last message came through, he could already tell she was letting her words get ahead of her mind, “I’m not _‘sheedaa’._ I’m Jester _Lavorre-”_

She must have realized her mistake at the same moment he did, because the spell abruptly vanished. 

\--------------------------------------------------------

  
  


_Jester_

“I messed up real bad, Traveler. Really, really, really, _really_ bad!” The Traveler frowned as she said it, and went to go hold her shoulders. Jester pulled away and hugged herself. “Now he knows my name! Now he might go for mama! And then dad too.”

She caught a hint of her own reflection in the rippling pool of her temple. There was no high priestess looking back at her. “I did it again! Oh, Traveler, I did it again…”

Jester had watched him eat dinner with the Brenattos; laughed at how fancy he tried to make himself for them; she pointed out to the Traveler the way he had paled and looked lost when Yeza mentioned the snow. It was fine until he had given Veth the sword. 

Veth had started to go down her usual trail, lined with self-deprecation and jagged unsaid thoughts, but Caleb Widogast had stopped her. And when Veth had looked at him, Jester had ripped herself from the hazy realm that Scrying took her to with a huff and snarl. The Traveler had been confused, and sulked for a moment in the corner. 

Jester knew that it was normal to have multiple friends. It was the reason she had built her temple. She had wanted a gigantic family, so she had built a place to house them. And technically she had told Veth to spy on Caleb, get to know him, make it easier for them to defeat him. 

But Veth was a bad liar. So what Jester had seen had been real. Veth had given Caleb the look she usually gave Jester. 

Veth had been so small when Jester found her, small and plump and frightened. Small enough that Jester had plucked her up, and even as the tiny woman protested she hadn’t been strong enough to really squirm out of Jester’s arms. The goblins of course recognized Jester, it took a moment but when they did they fled. A little help from the Traveler hadn’t hurt either. 

“They’re going to find me again, and my husband. We need to find my husband, he’s all alone-” Veth had then choked suddenly in Jester’s arms. “Oh gods, what about the rest of Felderwin, what if they-”

“It’s okay! We’ll figure it out.” Jester had made her choice. This was going to be her new best friend. Back then the Temple had just come to her mind, a small idea in the grand scheme of things. Veth had been the sign Jester had been looking for. “How about I fix your ankle at my camp, and then we can make a plan to kill all those goblins.”

“All of them?” Veth had let her breathing calm, the shakiness and the fighting stopped in her. She had been so small, but so thin too. “All of the goblins?”

“Absolutely. I mean, they’re just some goblins. There are scarier things in these woods: hags, and bears, and boggles, and rabbits, and sprites…” Jester had shook her new halfling friend a bit, realizing she had passed out in her arms. “Okay, goodnight, tiny lady.” 

Life had been fun with The Traveler on the road. The chateau that Jester had left behind in her homeland was...difficult to describe, and hard to breath in. It had been time to leave. But life on the road ached, and sometimes the Traveler’s voice would be carried away by the wind. 

Veth had helped her to find the happy medium. 

“ _Enough spying for tonight?”_ The Traveler had slowly drifted towards Jester, breaking her from reverie into the present. 

“No, I have to keep doing research.” Jester’s mama had stopped hiring tutors for her when she turned seventeen. She hadn’t needed them, they didn’t like her, and they had always made a point of telling her that her lack of focus would be her downfall. 

_Look! Look! I’m focusing now! I’m important and this evil, scary guy thinks I’m a big deal in his Empire!_

The wizard had sat his ass in an alleyway, specifically the one that Jester had run into and used as her abush spot. The jealousy faded when she saw him there, but the frustration at waiting for him to do something-- _anything--_ was sharper. So she goaded him, and for a second she was having fun. 

Of course he ruined it again.

“Speak more carefully. Since I’m so boorish and beneath you; I need to listen carefully to your sage advice, _sheda_.” He had said it with a weak malice that hid a crack in his voice, and could not cover up the shaky way he finished the sentence. Out of nowhere he had gone from eloquent and frustratingly cocky, to shamed and angry. 

She had a few comebacks, a poke at his accent or the way he wore ugly clothes. He was still using the nickname for her, and it was like a thorn snagging itself on her dress before she delivered a scathing retort. “I’m not _‘sheedaa’._ I’m Jester _Lavorre-”_

_The balcony, Lord Sharpe’s face going red, her mother handing her a tote bag and telling her it would be okay. Bluude, her mama’s bodyguard would at least escort her out of the city._

The Traveler lifted Jester’s chin. _“Tell me, what is the problem? Lay it before me in words.”_

“He knows my full name now! Mama said to never tell anyone my full name!” Her mother had always been the jewel of the sea, a star come down to earth, and an excellent secret keeper. Too bad her daughter wasn't like that. “He can’t find her right? No way, right?” 

The Traveler nodded and said, “ _Perhaps, but you know his true name as well...And you could always pop in for a visit, maybe relieve him of that memory or two.”_

Jester bit into her bottom lip, she sawed her top fangs over what felt like an increasingly chapped part. “Not yet...Not yet, Traveler. Veth was right, I need to deal with him _now_.“

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking of calling this fanfiction: "Caleb and Jester fight over Veth's attention and affection." 
> 
> Sorry for the shorter chapter. I've been averaging around 4000 words every two weeks and getting updates out in a somewhat timely manner, but I feel the slow down on the horizon. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has continually commented, and to the few people who have sent me private dms on social media.


	6. Interlude: A Traveler's Log

_He was not born bored._

_Fey were not born. They were, or they were not. They were the body of the wild: the mole on its cheek, the hairs on its arms; he was the canine in its mouth. He was called Artagan._

_But he had grown weary of the body, and it had tried to yank him out enough that he thought it best to show himself the door. He had no court, though he was a lord. He had no aspirations, though he had an insatiable wanderlust in him. He had no other goals, except that which flattered and reminded him that to exist was to enjoy oneself._

_He had decided to become a traveler, and had escaped to a whole new world. A world of even more chaos than his own, with short lived creatures and their many pleasures._

_It was like sticking his nose against the glass of a shop and staring in._

_There had been a green ocean, and a blue building with a wide balcony on its third story. It had white flowers growing up its walls, and a steady hum of bees._

_He had waved his hand, and the two human guards at the front had gone dull eyed, letting him through. He might have been described as elven, with pointy ears and long hair, but not quite. His face was human-ish too, but also not really. He took the features of the feywild and mashed them with the features of men that interested him the most. The man at the front desk of the building was put off by his smile, wide and impish._

_It wasn’t too hard to procure a room and find a table in the dining hall. Lanterns had dimmed and patrons took their seats, all turning their attention to a winding staircase. He was two seconds away from leaving the room in shambles, believing that what was to come next was a theatre production. He hated the theatre, trying to upstage him._

_A horned woman came down from the twisting platforms and stairs, singing her heart out and working the crowd like a dream. He had seen better. Yes, the woman with her crimson skin, fat body, and pristine voice could charm the other mortals with flesh and talent; but after a while he found himself stirring his drink and running his fingers up against the stained glass windows in the dining halls. He looked for gossip, messy patrons to prank, or a pretty bauble. He shifted invisibly to the third story balcony after going through the second floor and stealing soaps from the other guests’ rooms._

_He did not have to walk. He was either there or he wasn’t. The third story balcony led to a bedroom with a domed ceiling, a canopy bed, ornate rugs, thick curtains, and boxes and baskets of gifts. There were so many objects unopened and left forgotten that he helped himself to a nice hat from under the bed._

_This was the singer’s room. He opened a drawer in her mirrored boudoir, and observed a few objects that implied the woman was more than a vocalist. He fiddled with the straps and lacy bindings._

_But he was already bored again._

_He had waited for the singer to return to her quarters, still invisible and still wanting something to quench the itchy yearning that could command him. She had arrived a few moments later, pulled in a finely dressed man attached to her arm, and placed him slowly on the bed._

_He had been pleased by this turn of events. He could make a number of awkward accidents happen. Mortals, no matter how promiscuous, seemed to find pleasures of the flesh humorous and awkward in all spheres when things went wrong. Very few had the divine power to laugh things off; and the finely dressed man wore too many buttons and shiny medals to be part of the few who could._

_He had a spell ready right as the horned woman helped the man out of his coat, but it sputtered and the mood between the two mortals flared out as a subtle sound came from the wall. A tapping, rhythmic pattern could be heard from the rightmost wall near the bed._

_“Rats?” The man had asked his hostess. It was a poor attempt at humor._

_The horned woman had handled it perfectly; she had then gently convinced him to lay his head down and wait for her, as she unexpectedly pulled at the wall, a false door with minuscule hinges to let someone escape and spy perhaps._

_The man seemed pleased that she would feel comfortable enough to not keep this secret from him._

_Artagan followed the horned woman into a narrow crawl space where she had to duck and tilt her head to keep her horns from rubbing against the wood, he could hear other guests and realized that there was a beating heart to the Chateau, secret and secluded._

_The pathway ended in a circular room. He was entranced by the drawings on the walls: stick figures chasing each other with swords, sketched dragons, horses and unicorns. The woman sighed and lit a lantern at the desk. He almost missed the child, with her blue skin and her tiny horns, huddled under her bed and giggling._

_The horned woman had leaned slowly down to the child, attempting to be stern and failing. “Genevieve, did you watch the show tonight?”_

_“Genevieve isn’t here! It’s the Jester, mama!”_

_“Well, my little Jester knows that Thursday night shows are too late for her to watch.”_

_Their lingo was too perfectly mother and daughter, despite the irregularity of their existence. It surprised him how the pair had mastered a relationship reserved for homebodies._

_The child pouted and grabbed a hold of her mother’s dress as she neared closer to sitting beside her on the floor, her grubby little hands were covered in paint flakes and chalk. “Is the man in there nice?”_

_Her mother smiled patiently. “I only let nice people in my room, my sapphire. That is my rule.”_

_“But that other lady last week was talking about Bluude saying he was a monster, and you let her in your room?”_

_“My little sapphire, I told you no more eavesdropping.”_

_“But she said Bluude was a monster, and you still let her into your room!” The child reiterated her thoughts with a whine._

_“Some people are not used to seeing a Minotaur, just as some people are not used to seeing tieflings like us. Simple ignorance's can be remedied.” The excuse did not placate the child, but she did obey when her mother stood and patted the bed for her to come out from under. “Remember what else we talked about? When mama has guests?”_

_The child, now curled under a duvet in a room with only a small window and no other doors, nodded, but reluctantly. She raised her finger to her lips, and the mother did the same._

_The mother then blew out the lamp, making some promise or other to have breakfast with the child in the morning._

_He could tell the promise had been made a dozen or so times, but he wasn’t sure how well it was kept._

_It was always funny to him, the lies and stories mortals told themselves._

_He stayed when the mother left, no longer interested in her professional paramores. The child rolled about in her bed, exaggerating a tantrum while trying to keep quiet._

_He wondered what it would be like to change. Not just his appearance, but to be a quick-lived thing that underwent a thousand variations in such a short time. To grow, but to have grown in darkness like this._

_Men dreamed gods into the world, with swords in their hands, or books, or staffs. He had none of that. The feywild had dreamed him and formed him as capricious and inhuman as its own existence._

_And he had never been a child. He was unsure even if he could have them._

_He stayed in the blue building, the chateau. He watched the Jester play in the crawl spaces, draw on the inner walls of her home, talk to herself. Sometimes her mother kept her promises, but only sometimes._

_He was no longer bored. He would sometimes leave, the material world was surprisingly full, despite how small it was, but always returned._

_And then one day the Jester decided that she would swallow a glass marble from the new fish bowl in the lobby. She--like him--just wanted to see what would happen. Her mother had failed to keep her promises for the last week and the child had grown increasingly pest-like. She had the minotaur--whose job was to care for her mother--deregulated to babysitting duty. She stood on the tips of her toes and her hand descended into the bulbous tank. Koi, agitated with the foreign object grabbing at their rocks, swished and searched for an escape in their tiny prison._

_The child found what she was looking for and yanked her hand out. A maid passed by and said nothing. He watched the Jester consider what she was doing, and he wondered why she let herself be kept like the koi in the bowl. The door was a dozen or so feet away, running wouldn’t be hard._

_She pouted, the lobby was quiet in the morning. Most of the chateau’s staff at this point were nocturnal. There was a sense she was weighing how long it would take before Bluude realized she was no longer in her room. She had gotten good at timing her escapes to the drooping of his eye-lids._

_The Jester popped the green circle into her mouth and let it roll around her gums. It was a mischievous plan, but a truly childish one with too many routes leading to failure for his taste._

_The blue devil had a way with the dramatic, he chuckled as she jumped up and down with her hands on her throat, initially she was smiling through her own antics. But then her face began to turn purple, no longer blue. He was struck by a memory of his encounter with a young immortal, practically still hanging onto the sentiments that made him a man. The young immortal’s face had turned very red as the limits of his power were tested and he had temporarily expired._

  
  


_This one would not return. And that wasn’t interesting, just morbid and tragic._

_The Jester looked around for anyone in the world to help her. And for the first time in his existence, he felt pity. It was painful to be mortal._

_If he intervened, he would no longer be a watcher sticking his face against the glass. To look through the shop’s window was one thing, to silently sample its wonders was another. It could be dangerous to become a visible patron of its people, and it would attract the attention of old flames and haunts back in his world._

_He loved it. It was perfect._

_He leaned close to her ear and for the first time, spoke to her, “Laugh through it.”_

_He poked the back of her neck and the marble dislodged itself, and then catapulted from her mouth onto the floor. She gasped and clutched her throat, catching her breath and slowly descending into the fear; he pulled her back. “Laugh--you’re alive.”_

_He pulled her back from the emotion and touched the back of her throat again; this time another, smaller marble popped out of her mouth. He did this again and again, until the girl had a treasure trove of glass trinkets in her hand. She ran to the latrine, spilling necklaces and rings in her wake._

_She was laughing through the gems coming from her mouth; thanking him too, praising him like no creature had ever done before._

_“Where are you? Who are you?” She asked as she sat on the glittering latrine floor, unable to see him._

_He had always wondered what it would be like to have a childhood. He could have one, maybe share it with the mortal too, “I’m a traveler.”_

_Jester Lavorre was his touchstone. It was a rare thing, to find another creature so familiar to himself._

_When jokes went bad, or consequences came, he found that running with his tail between his legs back to the safety of Jester was a reward for another narrow escape._

_Artagan did enjoy his close encounters. They exhausted his magic, pulled his very being taut, and tested the metal of his cleverness to the core. Jester only saw the iron burns once on his wrists as she painted his nails. He leaned into the unbridled devotion, and was truly content._

_And she grew older. And he grew with her. And he found a few other mortals to spend time with, but never anyone who adored him as she did._

_And he did grow. New pathways, and doors, and halls of his magic and being grew as Jester grew._

_He had never had a purpose either._

_Then came the plateau. An endless landscape of tutors wrinkling their nose at her, riskier tricks, and awkward conversations between Jester and her mother. Jester angering a client of her mother was always written in the lines of the inevitable, especially as the walls began to close in._

_While he had explicit proof that very few things happened for a reason--and fate was a myth--the grooves of Jester’s personality flattered him like a mirror._

_She was ousted from her home in a similar manner to how the Feywild had tossed him out. The parallels could not be denied. From there, he preferred to let her forge ahead on her own. He had suggestions, a few tips for when she needed the divine intervention._

_He almost lost her once. A band of slavers, a dark night, a wrathful glimpse into what she could become if ever a force of evil found her. She had escaped with her joy intact, but it had taken a month of his care to heal her. He was unaccustomed to fear, and her sickness had pooled into him._

_Yet, in the end, it was all Jester. She had wanted to humiliate the nobleman who was annoying her mother, so he had given her a disguise. She had gawked and insulted the platinum dragon statue in Zadash, and the Traveler had supplied the paint to vandalize it. She yearned for her father, and they had found him (another month of his care to bring her back)._

_The Temple was the most recent of desires, and he had led her to a place where the fabric of her world bumped into his. It was no island paradise, and it was a bit too close to his home for his liking, but it could hide her, and supply wonders to her._

_And now, if Jester wanted to have a favored foe, then the Traveler could supply that for her too._

_He loved impromptu things, hated plans. This would be fun._

_The Traveler also meant to tell her to disguise herself when she entered Felderwin. But no one likes a pushy mentor, so he let her march into town. She mouthed ‘oh shit’, and cast her disguise of a village maiden before he had to intervene. Should he have stopped her from banging her fist at the mage’s door ? Well, no use in theorizing. It was her nemesis, not his._

_“Caaaaaayleb!” Jester threw her arms at the entrance. She pulled at the door handle. “I broke your door down once; I can do it again!” Artagan could only imagine what could come next. “I’m here! What are you gonna do about it? Whatcha' gonna do?”_

_It was funny, the little halfling woman had weaseled her way into Jester’s heart enough that she had decided to attack head on. And she could escape if need be, it was only a problem if you stayed too long and too close to the fire._

  
  


_The mage threw open the door holding a spell in his hand, ready to cast, kill too. He was wild in his look, and in the quick space between him and the intent to commit violence there was an interruption from a small voice._

_“Mr.Widogast?” An older human man was coming out onto his porch, it was a neighbor._

_Artagan smiled. It was a good thing he had not interrupted Jester. Complicated awkwardness was his favorite pathway in any scenario. Epic battles for the fate of good and evil could be so boring. Really, what had Jester and her wizard expected? The little halfling pariah had warned them as much about this town._

  
  


_The mage looked at Jester, who was disguised, and then to his neighbor. His open hand closed, his manic rage was covered with faux platitude, and he forced himself to painfully smile. “Yes?”_

_A crowd of neighbors were coalescing. They stuck their heads out their doors, some were as bold as to stare from the steps of their porches. The Traveler wondered how many had heard Jester break his door down the last time she was here, how many more would be whispering about this little quarrel tomorrow morning._

_The older human who had started this all looked at Jester, and with all the practiced politeness of a horribly hypocritical small town he said, “If it’s no trouble could you ask y-your missus to please be a bit quieter.”_

_Widogast blinked. “Missus?”_

_Artagan smirked. The rumors would run rampant tomorrow. Jester at least interjected in time. “Sorry sorry sorry-” His brave Jester had the audacity to move towards the mage, wrap her arm around him, and her invisible tail too._

_The neighbors did not see it, but Artagan did; the mage was fluctuating from terror to confusion to shame. In his own base of operations, Jester had rendered him at her mercy--again. She pulled him into the foyer, and shut the door with a swift kick of her foot. She was still pushed up against him, her grip tightening around his waist. “Do anything and I’ll let everyone out there know how much of an asshole you really are.”_

_Artagan had to give the mage credit, despite the naked vulnerability he was being subjected to, he had enough control to respond without stuttering, “And without your disguise they wouldn’t fault me for fighting back, little tiefling.”_

_Artagan was enjoying the squirming of the man. Jester had chosen well: the creature was stuffy and proud._

_“I bet they’d be so, so, so excited to learn all about your scary magic, and your scary academy, and your scary assembly-”_

_The mage tripped away from her, “That is_ enough _.” His enchantment slammed into Jester, no finesse and blockish. She wrinkled her nose and frowned, but then she giggled. Her laughter grew as the mage rubbed his arms and threw out another charm in the same messy and flustered style. “You will stop_ now _.”_

_“No, you’re supposed to do it like_ this,” _She twirled her index fingers, and Jester’s charm landed like a leaf that drifts to the forest floor. The man threw up his fists to counter it, stumbling to wave off the gentle coils that tightened around his mind. They clasped around him and the anger was suffocated by a blanket of passivity and friendliness._

_Artagan was reminded of a similar affair he’d had with a glasses wearing, mortal, nobleman. The mage’s shoulders lowered and his eye’s became softer. The magic had taken firm hold of him. Jester bounced over to his table and pulled out a chair, “How about you take it easy? I bet you’re still super-duper sore from when I stabbed you.”_

_The charm swirled in his eyes, the logic dumbed down enough for the mage to nod once and take a seat. In this state Artagan could see the programmed obedience that was already twisted around the poor fellow’s mannerisms, but also a shockingly gentle meekness that must have been part of his normal character. Jester brightened as any hostility faded and the man’s tongue loosened, “Ja, of course, rest. I don’t sleep many hours, and it’s been worse here.”_

_“Why is it worse?” Jester didn’t have to be subtle while the charm was up. She kicked her feet back and forth at the table, her head held in her hands staring at the captive mage. “Felderwin is so cute, why is it worse here? Also, why don’t you sleep usually?”_

_The man was shy, his shoulders went up to his ears and he couldn’t make eye-contact, “I don’t want to bother you with my problems. I’m not supposed to say, anyway.” The man’s accent had grown thicker too._

_“But Caleb, you’re my friend right now. And for the next hour you_ have _to be my friend. Friends tell each other why they’re not sleeping, is it because of all my great pranks ? I can’t go back to my temple without learning everything about you so you’ll leave Felderwin forever.”_

_The man couldn’t make eye-contact. He did not look like a soldier, he looked incredibly frail. He was like a kicked animal. “You’re funny…”_

_“It’s uh, it’s okay if you don’t want to tell me-” Jester stammered._

_His pupil, with her moral limitations, still sometimes had trouble asserting herself. Artagan leaned next to her ear, “Now would be a good time to modify his memory of your surname.”_

_“I don’t know, Traveler,” she whispered back._

_The mage looked up at this. “He is- He is here?”_

_“He’s always here!” Artagan did not correct her. He was with her often, but not always. Jester and Artagan watched the mage’s throat bob, like he was going to be ill. Jester’s tail swirled back and forth. “You don’t have to be scared! Unless you’re a dick--then you should be terrified. But you don’t seem too bad, except for when you squeezed me in that cat paw. I can let that go if you tell me why you’re scared? Deal?”_

_“Your people took something from me a long time ago.” The man paused. The spell was strong, but his faltering indicated he was fighting it each step of the way. “Your angel of irons--I cannot let him take anymore.”_

_Artagan filled his cheeks and blew out an annoyed raspberry. Revenge was such a boring motive. “I don’t know what the oaf is going on about, we should find you a different enemy. This one’s a cliche.”_

_“Uh, well we can give it back if that’s all it will take to make you leave.” Jester fiddled with her hands, some of the sad sob story had touched her. “Also, his name is the Traveler. You should get better at your research if you’re going to be our rival.”_

_Artagan felt the magic slink and reassert itself in the man’s head. The mage was desperate to keep himself quiet, and did not want to say what came next. Artagan poked the man’s nose and the magic stabilized. He shuddered and said, “What was taken was precious; it was irreplaceable.”_

_Jester bit her lip, guilty and embarrassed. “Okay, okay, I’m gonna take the spell off of you so we can talk normal, okay? Don’t try anything, I’m sorry- I maybe should have just talked to you from the start--shit. You’re gonna be so mad-”_

_Artagan wasn’t happy about the choice, but he was very excited to see where it would lead._

_The rage was instantaneous as the numbing effect faded from his glassy eyes. The mage sat up, the chair falling backwards, his hand raised for a spell._

_Jester had another trick up her sleeve. She threw her head back and moaned obnoxiously, “Oh, yeah, Caleb. Ah, you’re so good. Yes, yes, yes-”_

_The mage’s face went redder than his hair. It was a brilliant plan, and Artagan knew exactly why she was going with it. The mage needed clarification, he rushed towards her and shoved his hand against her mouth. He then ripped it away, rubbing it against his shirt after she evidently licked his palm. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He hissed._

_“I’m letting all your neighbors know about us, because now you can’t get rid of me.”_

_“How do you figure?” The man’s patience was thinning. “Rexxentrum is closer than it appears.”_

_“Yeah, I figured. But, then you’ll have to tell your boss all about me and the crazy shit you’ve been doing behind their back.” Jester conspiratorially mock whispered. “And then you’ll have to talk about how you’ve been working with that Expositor, and how you blew your cover in Felderwin with the Brenattos-”_

_“Enough,” the mage’s nostrils flared, and he ran a hand through his hair. Artagan could tell the man was trying to parse his way back to his dignity. With Jester there was no hope of that. “What is it that you’ve come for? You've been given multiple opportunities to finish me off.”_

_A good question. Artagan’s pupil truly didn’t know what she wanted, but she lightened up at this. He was happy she was at least having fun. “Oh my god, so many things. I’ve come for so many things, Caleb Widogast.”_

_And Artagan was not bored._

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a shake up from our usual pov's. Big thanks again for all the comments and support.


	7. Who Will Lead?

_Bren_

She was eating his food. She was in his house. She was eating his food in his house. The devil herself ate at his table. 

Jester Lavorre licked her fingers, eating pickled tomatoes from a jar, and talking through a full mouth. She had raided the pantry, declaring that she needed sustenance if they were going to ‘negotiate’. 

If there was a hell, then perhaps he was in it. 

“This is _so_ good,” Jester was complimenting every salted and pickled dish the Brenattos had given him. She had finished off a jar of jam first, and then moved onto savory items afterwards. A desert before dinner. Her nails clicked against the jar, and she happily hummed through eating.

A bitter irony settled in his stomach upon seeing her devour the Brenattos’ gifts. It twisted around his concern for the halfling couple, like an old smug friend on a cushioned love-seat. Jester knew he was associated with them, either due to his own carelessness, or potentially the Brenattos letting his name spill to a customer, who was actually an agent of this woman’s cult. The town had been beset by minor inconveniences, it was logical to consider one of the villagers had fallen under this priestess's charms and blackmail. She continued to talk at him through food in her mouth, “Have you eaten at all today? You’re so skinny.”

If she could trap him in his own base of operations, push him under her heel, then what could she do to this town? It would be dangerous to have Felderwin revolt, especially in the middle of an active conflict with their neighbors is Xhorhass. 

“Hm.” Bren sat across from her, holding his tongue. If he enchanted her, she would retaliate; if he used any number of his violences the neighbors would know it, and she would retaliate; and if he ran she would find him-- _again_. He shivered. They were destroying the safety and sanctity of sharing a meal. He refused to eat with her. Bren had his eyes go to her neck, she was wearing his anti-divination amulet proudly. She made no attempt to hide it, having the amber colored charm rested on her chest. 

She noticed him staring and piped up, food still on her face,“Whatcha’ looking at?”

The way her eyebrows raised,and her playful tone, was not lost on him. His own face was heating up, and he bore his fingernails into his palms. This was demented. “Nothing.”

He was as good as dead. Worse, if she caught him in another mind-inhibiting spell the Assembly would be at risk. His hands and legs were still free, this was her hubris. Or maybe her power. She took off the charm because she wanted him to feel everything that was to be done to him, let him know exactly what Una and Leofric had felt before-

_Not now. Not in front of her. Hold it together, you piece of shit._

“Hey, hey wait,” She was kicking her legs back and forth, he had never met traitors like this before. She had noticed whatever naked expression of pain had come over him at the thought of Una and Leofric. “You don’t have to worry, I’m not going to hurt you, unless you hurt me like you did before. Also, maybe that's my fault. I did try and wack you first. But that wasn’t real, sorta. I mean it was real when I was doing it. Now we can--like--pretend to hate each other, and there will be lots of benefits for both of us. And if you don’t then I’ll drive you out of Felderwin anyway, cool?”

“The scar across my abdomen begs to differ, _Lavorre_.” It was a cheeky thing to say, dangerous if she decided that playing with him had sated her. Yet, he did savor the way she scowled at him. 

She was sharper, though, and his victory did not last. She bit the bottom of her lip and said, “Lift up your shirt. I’m _so_ good at kissing things better.” She was smiling through the entire joke. 

His throat felt tight. He knew so little of this wild person who banged on his door and demanded his compliance. 

_“There will be temptation around every corner. I’m glad your greatest vice, my pupil, is your curiosity. Astrid drinks like her hayseed father, and Eudowolf can’t keep his hands off the new recruits.”_

_If you die here, they’ll investigate, but they’ll think you and her-_

_Oh, gods._

“I’m sure that line has been used before.” At least his master would never know how easily she’d caught him. Like a rabbit that eats out of the palm of a man. 

“Only with people I like.” 

“You attack people you like? Try and bludgeon them dead in the street like an animal?” He asked, and she had the audacity to look chastised. Bren rubbed his hands, thankful for the sleeves, but frustrated that he could not get up and put on his leather gauntlets. “Whatever you plan for me will not work, I cannot negotiate with enemies of the Empire.”

“You _cannot_ or you _will_ not.” She leaned on her elbow, spinning the empty jar after drinking the vinegar inside. “I’m not asking for much. All you have to do is tell everyone that you’re my enemy and that I’m a big deal in the Empire. It’s not that big of a deal since you’re already lying about being a Caleb to everyone.”

She wanted him to play-act in some ludicrous manner. The woman had gotten it into her head that he was anything but serious. He had to compose himself to stay present, “I will not negotiate with a murderer.” 

“So that’s a maybe?”

“You’re a monster…” All the vicious slaughter she’d committed, but still wearing a giggle around him. At the heart of it, that’s what she was. She could play cute and charming, but he would never forget. 

Jester paused, crossed her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes. “I’ve only killed like three people, a gazillion goblins, and this one mean swamp troll. That’s _it_. I know you’re a mage for the king, so you've probably have killed lots of people, hypocrite.” 

_That’s not right..._

Bren’s mouth dried up as he tried to swallow down a feeling, a slowly approaching realization, “You are newly a priestess?” It made little sense, the vandalism of the Platinum Dragon had been coordinated and magnificently executed. The reports indicated someone of extreme prestige, who had not acted alone either. 

“No!” That had offended her. Something in the question set her off. “I’m a real priestess, and the Traveler is real, and I’m his best!”

“The Angel of Irons has not told you of the others?” He could see she was telling the truth, she wholeheartedly believed she was the leader of the organization. Her anger seemed petulant, instead of righteous. 

“I already said the Traveler isn’t the Angel of Irons! I don’t know who that is!”

She was not lying, and that was what broke his will. Months of research flew in front of him, Beauregard’s skepticism, obsessive hours in his study, his reputation staking on a hope, his colleagues jeers and harsh snorts at his failing mental state. 

He was a young boy again, thin from days without food and cold from the chill that lived forever in that home for boys. He’d waited, kept his head down as best he could. The madam of the house had realized why he was there after a week or so, dragged him to a small chapel with icons of the Dawnfather while he asked the same questions he’d repeated over and over before Soltryce packed him away: _“Am I in trouble?”_

He’d hit the floor of the chapel, and from there he had learned what it meant for traitors in the Empire. 

He hid his head in his hands and wished he would burn to cinders. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

_Jester_

“Um, Caleb Widogast? Hello?” Jester waved her hand in front of the mage’s face. The action was more for her own sake, since the man was hiding his face behind his hands. 

She had gone too far….again. It was not her fault she was good at crossing the line. 

After an incredibly awkward silence, Caleb pulled his face away from his mask of palms, “You are not an active agent with the Angel of Irons Cult.”

He made it out to sound like a damning declaration. And with it, Jester felt suddenly inadequate. “Should I be?” She tried sounding coy. Her own motives were conflicting with her wants. Had all of the attention and the chase been meant for another?

_For a real priestess, of course._

Jester twirled her thumbs, “I can’t really pretend to be a priestess of an iron angel…The Traveler would be jealous, and it would hurt his feelings.” She was hurt. It was bewildering, but she was sad that his focus on her had been a mistake. 

Caleb looked up at her, silent and robbed of any words. His eyes drooped, from the alluded lack of sleep, or something else Jester could guess at from the hints she’d gained. She touched his stolen amulet on her chest. Jester unhooked it from her neck and went to go put it on him.

She forgot he was uncharmed, and when he recoiled violently she did too. They stared at each other, figuring out how to consolidate new information and changing roles, then the wizard held out his hand. “Did you do anything to it?”

“Yeah! I used it to steal your first born son, duh,” Jester said. The mage narrowed his eyes at her. “That was a joke.” She lowered the necklace into his open palm, slowly and with the care of someone dealing with a skittish animal. 

He existed in long pauses, Jester sat back down and waited for him to stop rubbing his face and flexing his hands. He did not scare her, but he did make her wonder. From in his coat--a hidden slot maybe--he pulled out a pocket-sized, bound book. “Hey, no evil magic!”

He put the book on the table and raised his hands, like he was saying ‘see, just a book.’ He waited for her wordless permission, then opened it. From the pages a quill popped out, standing upright. Caleb plucked it like one would pick a flower. 

Jester’s mouth went into an ‘o’ shape. She snapped it shut before the man could see how impressed she was. So much magic was made to explode in people’s faces, make them bleed and hurt. It was boring, and part of her hoped with the Traveler’s temple that they’d attract the attention of fortune tellers, artisans, singers; a few warriors would be nice, but clanging two swords together had no long-term fun to it. 

From her side of the table she could make out well-written notes in his language, charts and graphs carefully drawn onto tiny lined pages. He dabbed the quill to his tongue, but summoned no ink-well. 

She loved that quill, was a second away from throwing gold at him for it: “How do you do that? Where is the ink coming from?”

Caleb’s sad defeated look was brushed away in favor of a distant and calculating mode, his spine straight, and quill at the ready. He had the candor of the customs officers she’d encountered when leaving Nicodranus. “Your name?”

“You already know my name.”

He sighed, “your real name, please.”

“Only if I get to use your’s, Bren.”

He scribbled reluctantly in his little book, two could play at that game. Jester had come prepared and pulled out her beloved sketchbook. She began sketching out the man’s chin and head, making it gargantuan in comparison to his body. He looked up at her doing this, “Your age?”

“Guess,” Jester swished her tail, smiling at the quill shaking in his hand from rage. “I thought you knew all this about me already, and what does this have to do with our plan.”

She could see him deliberating, and she considered once again where he went in his endless thoughts, “Though you are not who I originally thought, you are still in a lot of trouble. But, you’ve caught me in a vulnerable position here. But this is still salvageable.”

She snorted. Vulnerable position. 

The mage wrinkled his nose, unamused, “seriously?”

“You don’t think this is all a little funny?” She wanted to forget about his sad eyes, his small meek voice, the way the straight-laced mage had shuddered and flinched away from her. Under his sleeves were crystals, and scars, and she didn’t sign up for any of it. Jester was here to watch him huff with frustration and shake his fist at her when she escaped. 

_Want, want, want. When will I ever stop wanting?_

“You don’t know what our laws are, do you?”

Oh, Jester knew. She knew that the Crownsguards at the border made her pay double the entrance fee to get into their shitty country, she knew Yeza and Veth lived in fear, she knew slavers and all kinds of criminals got away with carnage, and she knew why so many humans clutched their Dawnfather icons when she passed by undisguised. 

When her temple was finished the Dwendalian Empire would be throwing themselves at her feet to thank her for bringing some semblance of joy to their miserable lives. “I know enough.”

“Then you know there are fines for your vandalism, jail time too. What you did at the Temple of Bahamut was serious.” 

“Only if you get caught.” Her father had warned her about the prisons in this land. It had been a promise that if she found herself in one he would not come for her. Her mother could not save her in this country, and her father would not. “You couldn’t stop me, and you’re super important. No biggie.” 

“You are...odd.”

“I have to be if we’re going to pull off this con! You’re gonna make me so popular, Caleb.”

_"You can always tell when a man wants something that isn’t on the menu."_

Her mother was right, partially. Veth had the same look as Caleb and Caleb had the same look as Jester. Wanting was their weakness. Need was the wrong way to describe desire, because it implied necessity. They all could live without, yet that logic was antithesis to the Traveler’s teachings. Why live without? Balance could be achieved even with excessive desire. 

Caleb breathed out through his nose. Jester was struck by the urge to hold his face. Another strange want. “You are good at finding people?”

“I found you.”

“Are you good at finding people?” He desperately repeated his question. 

“I’ve got a whole bunch of tricks for finding people, _Cayleb_.” _Yes, I am still here. I am still important._

Only after he laid out his terms did Jester think about what this would mean for Veth and her. “Caleb, there’s also something you should know if we’re going to be cool partners now.”

\---------------------------------------------------------

_Veth_

It was going to be a shop day. A day where she stayed inside and occupied herself with stock, jars, and label making. Veth rubbed the crust out of her eyes as she flipped the sign at their door to read: ‘Open’. 

Veth had settled on returning the sword. Sorta. It was on loan. Ermendrud would arrive today to observe Yeza, and a good moment would make itself available to her to return it. She had it nestled under a shelf at the desk, once or twice her leg brushed up against the tarp it was wrapped in. 

Jester was enough temptation. The sword was too much, a great and terrible precipice. 

Veth picked up a quill in her hand, reminding herself to let it sit between her index and thumb, and laid out some parchment to begin making vial labels. The old school house hadn’t had a good teacher in years, and Veth had quit to take care of her father and brother. Her handwriting was evidence of that.

She’d learned more from her dysfunctional family, anyway. 

_Keep saying it. It will become true eventually._

“What a beautiful day.” Yeza popped up like a mole from within the cellar, rubbed his hands on his apron, and smiled at the shop's interior. Every jar and creme was in its intended spot, alongside his diligent wife. Also in the place she was meant to be. 

“Yeah, slow business, though.” 

“And no sign of Caleb?”

Veth shrugged. “Your new best friend is too tall to hide in our house. If he was here, you'd know.” 

Yeza smiled to himself, only half catching his wife’s sarcasm. “Well, he better get here soon. I think the distillments are done,”--Yeza verbally danced around the look his wife gave him. She guessed he was trying not to get her hopes up--”and I want to actually put them through a few tests.”

And here Veth thought she would be spending the day in the shop, “How about I bring Old Lady Edith her pills?”

Yeza shoved his hands into his apron pocket, hovering as Veth collected a paper bag for one of their best customers, an aging, human crone who spoke better halfling than Veth’s father had, and had a whip sharp judgement of everybody in town. “I promise it won’t be like this forever.”

“I know,” Veth pecked him on the cheek. “Change scares me, is all.”

\------------------------------

“I thought you were dead,” Old Lady Edith, a hunched figure bent like a crescent moon, croaked. “They said the goblins killed you.” 

Veth was long past pretending to be polite to Edith, she held the medicine out and shook it like she was summoning a dog for its treats. Edith’s manners were expiring alongside her eyesight, and Veth’s humor had endured the trauma of almost being a goblin’s stew. Their dialogue showed as much. “It wasn’t funny the first time you said it.”

“Whatcha’ say, girl?” Edith was a bad actor too, placing her hand near her ear. 

Veth shook the bag again, “I know you’re faking, just take the damn medicine. I have a husband to get back to, and I’m sure you’ve got one you’re in the middle of throwing into your witch cauldron.” 

Edith smirked, her wrinkled and flabby face had a hard time forcing up all the skin to make a grin. “You know I like you best.”

“Yeah, great, medicine? Two silver, please?”

“Have you told him that he undercharges?” Edith fished out some coins from inside a weather beaten shawl pocket. 

“I have.” Veth shifted from foot to foot, not really putting her all into the back and forth. The weather was blistering despite it not even hitting noon. She wanted to get back, to at least be above the cellar, for Yeza’s tests. 

_"What did Derogna do to you?" For starters she cut me from my husband’s work, made his life more dangerous, and threatened to destroy me. What did Derogna do to you ?_

Edith tapped Veth’s arm, “You wanna hear some gossip?”

“No.”

_“_ Too bad, here goes; that fella was seen and heard with a new woman last night.”

Veth wanted to run back to her husband, her itchy feet were telling her to go back _now_. She should have stayed with him while he did the tests, not leaned into the terms set by Derogna and gone out for a casual errand. The woman wasn’t omnipotent, she’d never know that Veth had kept an eye on him. “You’re going to have to be more specific, Edith.”

“The red haired one.”

Veth snapped to attention, “Does he wear a long brown coat and big gloves?”

“Yep he does. And he likes to hang a lot around your shop.” Edith suffered from a specific loneliness that caused her to wave a broom at children from her porch, but also take a vested interest in certain people. Specifically the people responsible for her medicine. “Pretty lady too, made a lot of noise, had a good time with him is what I hear.”

Veth yanked on her braids. First Jester and a new recruit to the club, and now the mage and a new woman. 

_Ew. No, no way. No. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it!_

Edith pointed a wobbling finger past Veth, “Whatsa’ that?”

A few Crownsguards were running down the street, their faces were pale and bewildered. Following them were towns-people and other folks who caught their hysteria. 

_Jester wasn’t scheduled to pull any pranks today…_

Veth whispered to herself, “Don’t turn left, don’t turn left towards the apothecary-” They veered to the left, and the crowd following grew bigger. “Shit, Edith I gotta go!”

“Watch your language!” 

Veth leapt off Edith's porch and hit the dirt already running and weaving through humans and elves. Another part of her life was going to be on display, disaster and pain for everyone in her village to consume on a mass level. She was so tired. 

She shoved to the front of the crowd, the swelter of their bodies and voices in the heat agitating her even more. But just when she thought she’d reach the end, there were more bodies to block her path. Like a whole world between her and Yeza. A million horrible thoughts hit her: chemical burns, fire, poisonous gas, transfiguration, insanity. If the Assembly had just told them what the distillments were for then it would have been fine. 

  
  


“Please, my husband- That’s our house- please I need to-” A leg connected with her back and she was pushed to the ground. 

“ _You should have brought the sword.”_ The headache sound of his voice made Veth squabble up and brush off the dirt. 

Veth looked up to see an elf with a straw hat and a wisp of wheat sticking out of his mouth. The caricature could be no other than the Traveler, his farmers clothes were too clean. “Please- I can’t get up there! What’s happening at my house?”

“ _Stand on my shoulders.”_

“No!” If he touched her, lifted her even, she would have to admit to herself that he was real. He was Jester’s weirdo, and he was real and here to stay. Veth pulled her arms to her chest and hugged herself. 

“ _So much is happening, shame you’re missing your life story because you can’t see past a human knee.”_

“Fine! Fine!” Veth shuddered at the way she threw her hands out, like a child asking someone to lift them up. 

_“Say please, little halfling.”_ The Traveler’s disguises could hold up under intense scrutiny. There was no reason his green eyes should have flashed when he negotiated with her.

“ _Please_ , please help me see what’s going on.” Veth was disgusted with her own desperation. 

The freak effortlessly lifted her, gracefully and with a ballerina’s strength. She wobbled on his shoulders until he gently guided her hands atop his head. She hoped he couldn’t tell she was blushing. “ _Tell me what you see, little halfling, little house-wife. I want to hear it told in your words.”_

Veth held onto the Traveler, the sensation that he was more real than what she was seeing was like vertigo. She was learning everyday that impossible things were more likely than not. 

The apothecary, her house that she had built from the ground up with her newly-wed husband, was floating away into a summer sky. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone ! This week marks the start of me going to school full time. I've been able to produce a steady stream of 3000-4000 word updates every two weeks, but don't know how much of that schedule I will be able to keep going forward. I will do my best, and hope you are all still enjoying this weird rollercoaster of a story.


	8. Who Will Follow?

_Jester_

“She- She must hate the Empire…” He said, but he sounded more dispirited than shocked or angry. 

“She doesn’t hate you, she just hates the Empire.” 

“Was that not what I said?”

“Oops, yeah. She sorta kinda hates the Empire,” Jester was still sketching his nose and hair. Doing well not to catch his eye, even when she looked up to reference a detail in his face. She had drawn almost all of his expressions in her sketchbook: painfully neutral, bewildered, frustrated, lost-looking, hyper focused, and absent. “Look, you shouldn’t be that surprised. She loves the Traveler almost as much as me and the Traveler thinks you guys are sorta lame.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes at her. Jester smiled, but felt his calculating gaze slide over her. 

If she said she didn’t understand why he was shocked--so sad that someone did not love his Empire--then she would be lying. Sometimes she felt like the Traveler and her were standing on the side of a glass window, making faces and having fun, but never actually entering the room where the rest of the world lived. 

There was a long silence, where her charcoal scratches and shadings could be heard next to the natural creak of his house. Jester promised herself she would beat him at this game, like a staring contest, or a test to see who could hold their breath the longest. 

“You’re unafraid,” he said. 

She considered easing up on him a bit...He seemed like he needed someone to give him slack, some room for forgiveness.

_Green glass in his arms. So many scars. He whimpered when you lowered him onto the bed._

_And now he wants me to find those people. Because he thinks if he was confused about your temple, then there will be others who are confused too._

_“Angel of Irons sounds too death metal for us, don’t you think.”_ The Traveler was neither pleased nor angered by Jester’s new side gig. He was just curious. 

“You’re pretty good at pretending to be scary, Caleb, but I’m better.” 

Jester smudged her thumb across the tiny lines near his neck, it was hard to shade the area where the neck and chin intersected. Her thumb cramped and the charcoal smeared.

She was missing anything close to a smile. It would take incredible work to poke out what she guessed was already there; a bit of mischief, a hint of rebellion, a sprinkle of resistance that she saw when he tried to keep his face still. 

“And where do women with pink ribbons on their tails learn how to frighten?” 

_Mosquitoes_ _buzzed in her ear and landed against her face, splashing sounds of other creatures indifferent to her came from the swamp around them. She had no clue where these humans were taking her. She was alone._

“You pick it up, it’s not hard.” 

Caleb rose from his seat, looked to the door and back to Jester, “It would be best to rest. It is late. Much has changed.”

Jester imagined her walking back into the woods, another night in the temple resisting the urge to use Sending and ask Veth to come stay with her, or have the Traveler tell her one more story before sleep overtook her. “Cool, I call the bed!”

The mage was fast, the way he sidestepped her to the bedroom door was weirdly graceful. Jester bit her lip; she was tired, they’d spent a long time playing at their back and forth conversations. There was the possibility of stopping, she would be letting him have a bit of a lead up on her. 

_Nah._

She stood on the tips of her toes to see into his room, she recognized it from the night she had dragged him back. Caleb tilted into her line of vision, trying to block her at every step. “No- _Nein._ You may not stay,” He said. 

Jester pointed and cast Dimension Door into the room. There was a brief moment where she hovered over the bed, and then came falling down. She bounced and shrieked with laughter at Caleb, who spun around and yelled after her, “ _Du hast keine Schande, verrückte Sheda!”_

She mentally crossed off her list: ‘get him to lapse completely into his language.’ 

_Another victory for me. Are you even trying anymore, Caleb?_

“Too slow,” Jester gloated. The bed was stiff and just as small as she remembered it. “Is this like the bed you slept in when you were twelve, jeez, Caleb it’s too small.” 

“You’re going to leave at dawn.”

Jester could tell that he was framing it like an order, a command to a subordinate. Too bad for him, she’d had years of practice breaking her tutors and teachers. 

“I’m not a morning person.” Jester absently twirled her hands through her tail. 

He waved his hand, and the single pillow was half levitated and half yanked out from behind Jester by an invisible force. “ _Gute Nacht_!”

“Guda knock, Caleb!”

Jester heard him slap the pillow down on the floor somewhere in the kitchen. He mumbled a few words to himself, likely casting a spell, and then she heard his body settle on the ground. 

“ _And we stayed here because?”_ the Traveler asked. 

_“_ I needed to make sure,” She whispered to the Traveler. He was floating horizontally, leaned close to her head like he was sleeping on the bed too. Because of the twin sized mattress he was made to commit to his antics in the air. It looked pretty funny. “I just spilled a lot of Veth’s secrets...I hope she isn’t too mad...But if he was evil--or like crazy--he would have run off and like gone and tried to kill her after I told him, right?”

“ _Not a long con, then?”_

“No, no, because why would he let me go. And Traveler, you- you saw his arms.” 

“ _I did…”_

“He might be right, those goth people are impersonating us and cheapening your brand.”

“ _Our brand._ ”

“Yeah! Our brand! If we work with him: I get to still be his nemesis, we get to have the temple, and Veth and Yeza won’t have to worry anymore.” It was exciting, this was new. The pranks between her and Veth had been nice. Nice for a time. Nice in the moment. Now they could step up in the world, make themselves more public. 

No more hiding. 

“ _You didn’t answer me,”_ The Traveler said. “ _I did not ask what this man could do for us. I asked why we have decided to stay for the night.”_

Jester flipped onto her back, “Um-”

“ _It’s okay. Messiness is spun into your nature. If the reason has not emerged verbally, then it’s not the time.”_

“Traveler?” Wants and whys mixed together. “Could you at least check on Veth in the morning?”

“ _If you wish it, I will do it. Until then, I might just stay and make sure your wizard isn’t bitter. Hopefully he doesn’t do anything foolish.”_

“I don’t think he will…I feel kinda bad kicking him out of his own bed.”

\--------------------------------------------------

_Bren_

Una used to have him sleep by the stove; winter in Blumenthal was horrendous. But this was summer. He would not be here through the winter, would he?

If his master knew of what he’d done--and he would, eventually--Bren would soon face a winter that never ended. 

_But if we use that woman to find the true devils, the day could still be won. Master Ikithon will understand your sacrifice. He will be forgiving as long as something comes of this sacrifice. The safety of the world comes with sacrifice. Everything lasting and true comes with endurance._

Jester Lavorre was not an all powerful priestess. She was strong, frighteningly strong, but careless with her magic and erratic in her nature. And worst of all not associated with the Angel of Irons, who was actually a separate entity from the Traveler. He was going to wring the necks of the librarians at the Cobalt Soul. Beauregard would be hearing from him. Their shoddy research at that half baked monastery had led to this. 

_But you somehow, despite everything, feel hope._ He was laying on the floor, trying to remember how he’d gotten to this point. The only concession he’d gained from Jester tonight was a shaky alliance, and a pillow while she got the rest of his bed. 

_The Halfling. This is her and the husband’s fault-_

_No, that’s not fair to them. You know they’re just two people who’ve been humbled, pushed to where they are. It’s tragic. We’ve failed them._

This pathway had started long before his exile to Felderwin. It had started with another exile, and ended here with his foolish choices. He had begun this journey when he was fourteen--almost fifteen--scrubbing the floors at the home for boys. He hadn’t minded the chores; he had clung to them when there was not a single book in the home, no kind words, no other place to escape to. It had been a dusty cabin, just outside the city. It was by all accounts the perfect place to dispose of things you did not want. It had a wide central room for bunks, twelve in use. Twenty four boys total. 

He had tried his best to make the most of things. He had promised Headmaster Margolin he would. Though at the time, he had started to worry about the pain in his throat. It was indescribable. There was pressure, and there was heat, and there was...anger. 

That which could not be described or cataloged was unnerving, so he had scrubbed until his knees ached. He had hoped so earnestly that he would see his father’s reflection, clad in his Crownsguards uniform, in the soap and water spread across the floor. Sometimes it was his mother who came to save him too. She had no uniform, but she did have Bren’s red hair, and knew about the scar on his ankle from when he’d been five. 

_Chores and daydreams, daydreams and chores, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat-_

The madam had found his compliance agitating. She was looking for something, and only years later did he realize what she wanted was for him to crack. He had certainly not been used to cruelty from adults until the home for boys. Teachers could be stern, and the elders in Blumenthal could be cross, but this was new. 

The madam had thrown him to the floor of a chapel, “Heresy, father.” 

The pressure in Bren’s throat had almost erupted, he found his voice after a week of one word answers, “That cannot- _nein._ Not t-t-true.” 

He remembered how poorly the words came out. A week into hell and he had been falling apart. He remembered thinking if he ever escaped this place there was no way the debate and oration team at Soltryce would take him now. Before this, his thick accent had been the only challenge. 

The human priest had looked down at Bren, “Who did your family worship?”

Bren had to think. His family was relaxed in their faith, it was difficult to be devout when everyday was a question if they could produce enough food for themselves and the quotas set by the Crown. They did have a summer festival to the Dawnfather, though. “The Dawn-” 

“ _Pelor,”_ the priest had corrected, slapping Bren across the face. The rings on his fingers had cut into Bren’s lower lip. “What is his holy day?”

Bren had been faced by this anachronism, this old and feeble religious coot, and been terrified. And the pressure in his throat had only increased.

“I t-think-” Another slap had hit Bren, and this time his head had started ringing, the strike had been aimed at his ear. This was where he learned that crying only made it worse. “I- I-” _don’t know._

“They sent a murderer’s spawn to us without a word of forewarning. Godforsaken Rexxentrum...” The madam had said. “And now I learn the his bitch-mother ran off with a cult.”

_Find a place to run. Leave your body behind--it will heal-- your mind is delicate. It remembers, and the scabbing details will not mend over._

The priest had not responded to the madam, he asked Bren instead, “Where does Pelor reside?”

“His fortress t-that lays w-within t-the s-sun…” Bren had held his cheek, looking to the madam and the priest and shying away from their displeasure, their easy cruelty. It was a miracle he’d made it through the ‘w’s building the word ‘within’. The man’s hand had reared up again and Bren had panicked. “No, no, I mean the Fortress of the Sun...The Fortress of the Sun and the fields where there are angels. Home- his home is there for him. Please, sir, please- _nicht mehr... Es tut mir leid. Es tut mir Leid. Bitte-”_ He whimpered through the entire rest of his explanation. 

  
  


The man--the priest, the father--had pulled the madam aside. Mystery surrounded what he whispered to her, but after that Bren was secluded to the chapel. He was kept there to repent for sins his parents had never committed, but that somehow still fell on his shoulders.

How could they fault him--his friends, his master, his peers--for his obsession? The Crown had bigger things to worry about besides religion. Wildemount for years had tried to purge faith from it's shores, limiting the number of gods, limiting the celebration of holy days. Who was this man to abuse him? Criticize him for things that were entirely false.

After an experience like that was burned into Bren, how could he not go chasing conspiracies? Hunting for the truth that would liberate his family?

Bren curled on the floor of the house in Felderwin, his place of punishment. He would not get caught working with Lavorre. He would show them all. They'd call him a hero. 

_And what would happen to the Brenattos if you turned her in now? No, you will not let yourself be caught like a vandal._

“Caleb?”

He leapt up in the dark. The choice to have a sleepless night had already been decided for him as he’d placed a silver, alarm string around his form. Jester had still snuck upon him, though. “What could be of possible need now, Lavorre.”

She shifted in the dark, “You’re not going to call me 'sheda' anymore?”

Bren was always asking himself if he was reading from the right script, “I will call you whatever pleases me.” It was bluff, he was sassing a woman who stole his bed. 

He flinched as she threw something his way, cloth hit him and he realized it was her green cloak. “You folded it so nicely under the bed, Caleb. Thought you might be cold.”

She skipped away, back to go sleep in his bed, telling him exactly what he already guessed: you’re a fool and everyone knows it. 

\---------------------

Daylight arrived, and Jester Lavorre did not leave. Or try to kill him. She slept late, and Bren found himself pacing in the kitchen. 

He would have to confront Veth Brenatto. She was lucky it was him, and not Vess Derogna. Vess cared very little for religion, despite this fact she was always vocal in ensuring Bren would fail to receive funding for an expedition, reminding his colleagues of his past, and recently honing in on his breakdown…

A steady pounding came at his door. It was determined and delivered with a heavy fist. 

He turned to where Jester was blearily rolling about the bed. Whoever was knocking had bypassed the string. It did not seem to be of Jester’s doing. “ _Caaaaaleb_ , please be quiet!” Jester complained laying face down on the bed. 

Bren pressed his hand to the door, on the other side was Veth Brenatto. Her face was puffy and she shifted from knocking to beating both hands against the door simultaneously. 

He knew. She was not crying tears of anguish, but rage. Like the pressure he’d felt in his throat at the house for boys. 

Like the pressure that still followed him to this day. 

\---------------------------------------------------

_Veth_

_“How about we ask the mage for help?”_ The Traveler had slyly suggested to Veth. And so she’d leapt from his shoulders and taken off to Ermendrud’s house. 

The mage opened the door, and for a brief moment there was frustration on his face. Yet, he didn’t hold it, the expression faded back into him. Veth wondered how crazed she looked, was her distress and anger that obvious? He had to open the door looking worried for her. He just had to be him. She wants Derogna back; she wanted people to either be assholes or nice and normal again. 

_She wanted--_

“Help him! Our house--- _fuck_. Caleb, help me!” She’d run to get his aid, and her sides and lungs hurt from it. 

“ _Frau_ Brenatto-”

“No time! The potions--the potions are finished!” She grabbed his hand, pleading with him to not be like the Crownsguards who’d let her be kidnapped; to not be like that wide and strange world that existed outside of Felderwin; that simultaneously didn’t care about her, but affected her life anyway. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t rip his hand from her’s. “Our house is flying away!”

The mage didn’t call her crazy, and he didn’t tell her to calm down. He said, after a pause of searching her face, “Let me get my gauntlets.” 

Veth sputtered as Ermendrud quickly pulled away and slammed the door. From the other side of his thin walls Veth could hear him running about the house, speaking to someone else while he searched for his gauntlets. His voice was tense and low, but the other speaker had a high pitch and whine. Veth placed her ear against the door. 

“And what would you do if you followed me, _sheda_? Humiliate me? Publicly execute me? Don’t tell me this sabotage is your doing.” He was running about the house. “Where the _fuck_ are my _gloves_!

“I bet they’re up your ass, Caleb.” An unmistakable sing-songy voice responded to him. _Cayleb._

Veth jumped away from the door like it had burned her. She almost laughed, almost. Everything erupted in a bright clarity to her. 

_The rumors were true then…_

Jester had promised her she would deal with the situation. Veth’s face felt hot. This was unconventional for sure, like a trashy romance novel if Veth was being honest with herself. Who would have guessed that tiny Veth Brenatto’s story would change from a dry and crumbling slice of life, to horror with the goblins, to this strange farce. 

Caleb Widogast exited the front door, slamming it behind him, red faced and wearing the scowl that only Jester could give. 

Veth was not mad, nor was she that shocked. She felt a humor enter every pore of her. Had she ever been scared of this man? How? This so called powerful mage had been bested by Jester. Somehow she was alive in his house, and from the sounds of it not his captive. 

_Did she actually? I mean Edith loves rumors, but-_

He was no better than Veth; he was enchanted by Jester. Like the fairy tale of a pumpkin and a carriage at the toll of a bell, Bren became Caleb.Bren’s gloved hands were shoddy; and the way he trailed after her husband like a lost puppy seemed lonely; and his constant apologies to her were desperate. 

_Jester shoving the amber necklace under the front of her dress. Ermendrud’s obsession with finding her. The way he shied from questions about her despite the grand entrance he’d made for them in the shop that first day. Why did he live in such a small house if he was so special?_

“ _I’m surprised you think this is ironic. You're laughing. You are indeed one of us, Veth,”_ The Traveler said in her ear. It was the first time he’d ever used her name. " _Don’t you have a husband to save?”_

“How many?” The wizard was looking up and down the street. The painfully, fragile wizard was still trying to play authoritarian. 

“Huh?” She was coping with the new light she saw him in. 

“How many people in front of your home? How many villagers know?” He was mumbling to himself, he cursed at the time of day under his breath, something about sleeping in. He reached for Veth’s hand. 

She let him take it. Had he always forced his spine artificially straight? “Nearly the whole goddamn village.”

“That’s- That is bad.” He squeezed her hand and once again searched her face for something. Well, no way to hate him now. He and her were kindred and hindered by Jester Lavorre. “Hold on.”

“Wait wait wait-” Veth realized that being putty in Jester’s hands did not equate a lack of magical power. Her stomach lurched as Widogast took both her hands in his. Her feet drifted away from the earth. “Jester wouldn’t even do this to me, you bastard!”

She clung onto his coat, the ground too far away. Houses and halflings belonged on the ground. She’d expected more people to see them--they were flying--but people in Felderwin like to keep their heads down, or fixed on the tragedy in front of them. 

They hit the roof of a home a block away from her and Yeza’s apothecary, his flying was faster and more practiced than Veth’s. Her knees buckled, and for a moment she saw the edge of the shingles where a harmful fall awaited her. Before she could tumble, Caleb caught her under her arms, hauling her up sitting next to him. 

“Why?” He kept searching her face, looking for a reaction in her that she was clueless to. “Why did you go to Jester Lavorre for aid, and not Vess Derogna. Why did you abandon your Empire?” 

“I- Jester saved me.” _Are we really talking about this now?_ “She helped me fight the goblins...I would be dead without her. It was before I ever met Derogna...” _Jester is my second best friend. The first person not from Felderwin to even consider me a person. The second member of my new family. My real family._

Caleb kept staring at her. Like he had the first day in the shop, expect now he looked wounded. “The Crownsguards here aren’t very good, are they?”

“I would love to have this heart to heart with you, but my husband is afraid of heights and I’m sure this isn’t doing wonders for his trauma. I get you're being eaten up by this, but we should also worry about how mad the Assembly will be if the formula isn't saved.” 

He cocked his head to the side, and pursed his lips together before opening them and searching for the right words, “I get it now.” Caleb pulled her close to him, she squeaked even though she knew it was coming. “Hold on.” 

Veth’s braids whipped against her face, the air dried out her lips and she found herself turning more towards Caleb. She was dressed for summer, not this nonsensical diversion of wind. She wondered how much flying he did, if in his wizard, capital city everyone flew to get to places. He seemed natural at it, comfortable using his own magic. Unlike when he was talking, negotiating, or putting on airs--this was real. 

She looked up to see his face; he was calculating. She had seen that look on her husband in the lab. 

The higher they went, the more Veth felt herself laughing in terror. A few times she screamed into his chest. “Why are we going _higher_?” 

It was strange seeing her home from this angle: beams and planks from the porch hung like tree roots up-righted. It was not floating as quickly as she’d thought upon first seeing it. It was almost drifting, lazily. On the ground Veth’s porch rocking-chair was smashed. It was a childish thing to be worried about at the moment, but a part of her hurt seeing it destroyed. She’d brought that from her dad’s house. It was one of the few things she had kept. 

“What a story it would be for your friends to see you flying to rescue your husband,” Caleb said. 

“They’re not my friends…” The people on the ground, gawking at her misfortune, they were neighbors and acquaintances. And even those titles were a stretch. She’d lived here her whole life in Felderwin surrounded by strangers. 

Widogast squeezed her closer. Not an unwanted gesture because of the chilled wind, but an odd one. This was what her husband must see in Caleb. “I’m going to land us on the back porch, I’ll try and dispel the magic without having your home-” 

“Destroyed?”

“Yes, _ja,_ uh- I can fix this. I will fix this for you.” His stammer sent alarm bells rocketing through Veth. He held onto her as they touched onto the back porch, the wood creaked and Veth couldn’t help but moan in terror that somehow his magic would fail and the house would give out under them. There were still people below, now looking like dots. Felderwin seemed smaller from a distance. 

Caleb’s hand grasped the door knob, but he hesitated. “I have no idea what magic or harm awaits us, Veth.” 

“Not a clue?” She joked back. “Well, it couldn’t be worse than a goblin throwing rosemary and garlic on you and your husband.”

He did not laugh, “This could be new magic; horrible alterations to the world; elements that the Assembly hasn’t even tested yet.”

Veth wanted to comment that if that was the case, then why had they thrown these horrors at two simple halflings in Felderwin of all places--a place distinctly free of such horrors. Instead of commenting, Veth put her hand on the door knob next to Caleb’s and sighed, “On three?”

“ _Eins, zwei, drei_!” Caleb said. They twisted and pushed the door inward--

“Oh hey, guys!” Jester Lavorre stood proudly in the middle of floating chairs, vials of potions, and the utter chaos of Veth and Yeza’s apothecary. “I thought you would need help, so I followed you. You wasted a lot of time talking on that roof. Also, I can’t find Yeza.” 

Veth looked down at the floor, an open cellar door swung outward to air and sky. Of course Yeza wouldn’t be in the house-- _the cellar was still down to earth_. Veth's hand went to hit her forehead, “we are _so_ fucking stupid.” 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has commented with continued interest in this story. Your comments, as always, are incredibly appreciated and beloved. 
> 
> Hope to see you all in another two weeks and have a happy October!


	9. The Revisions in the Text

_Jester_

Jester couldn’t believe Veth and Caleb had expected her to stay put. That was on them, not her. 

_Veth left with him. She took that sword and now he’s going to save her and-_

Jester had few people to share her polymorphing abilities with, and the Traveler teased her for turning frogs into birds, and deer into dogs. Falcons weren’t supposed to be cobalt blue; where was the fun in that, though? If houses were allowed to float away, then Jester could transform into as many colorful animals as she wished.

And the house had done more than float away. When Jester landed on the floor of the fireplace--shaking off soot from her feathers and morphing back into her tiefling’s form--she was greeted by floating chairs, iridescent waves of blue and black in clouds around the house, and in slow motion bottles spilled their contents over the shelves of the apothecary. 

It was a very slow explosion. The glass from beakers and containers drifted in the air at the rate of a soap’s bubble. She poked her hand through the cloud of iridescence and found to her surprise that it was almost gelatin. 

She laughed as she poked and poked, feeling the sensation of slowing and swimming her fingers through the cold liquid material. 

Jester wondered if her dad had ever seen anything like this. She could bet that in his years as a criminal in Zadash, hiding like a sewer rat, he’d never dealt with the Cerberus Assembly. Never even had his own rival or nemesis. Just a series of faceless people after him for his actions, but not for his persona or personality. 

“ _You’re making that face again.”_ The Traveler started shaping the clouds of purple ichor in his hands. He made a unicorn, then a dick, then a smiling face. “ _Don’t let him spoil this for you when he’s a hundred miles away at best.”_

“I won’t.” Jester pulled her hand from the gunk and framed it into a floating mustache near her lips. “I’m just excited to tell him about everything I’ve been up to. Can’t forget to invite him to the temple when I get the chance.”

_You’re having fun. This is fun. You’re in a floating house, you have a best friend, and a sort-of-rival too. This is good. It’s been so long since I called dad...Or mama. Have fun, god damn it!_

And when Veth and Caleb arrived, somehow Jester caused more of a disturbance to them than all the fantastical things around the house. Caleb’s mouth had gone wide when he opened the door, and Jester had felt the rush that came only from being seen. Supremely and unequivocally visible. He was angry, but he was also _impressed_ with her. He gave her a once over, looking from her feet to her face to make sure she was real. 

_Good. Never stop that. Never stop seeing me. Hate me all you want, but never stop believing in me._

They stared at each other for a long beat. Veth had to clear her throat. 

“Oh my gods! It’s the evil lady you’re looking for, Sir Ermendrud. Oh, thank goodness the spell has worn off, and I realize anything I admitted to or did, was done under her uh- evil magic.” Veth winked at Jester. 

“We have burned and brushed that bridge already, Veth,” Caleb said. “Can’t stand not being the center of the tragedy, Lavorre?”

Veth turned her head to look up and sneer at him, but Jester saw the way he swallowed after saying it. His eyebrow curved and the faintest hint of a smile had been there. He’d had to squash it before Jester saw too much. Jester twirled the strange magical goop between her fingers. “For your information there is no tragedy, because Yeza isn’t here. So whose stupid now, Caleb?”

He looked offended at that. “I never said that about you.” 

“No, you just told me to hide in your house, because you think I’m stupid, and not a real cleric,” Jester talked over him. It was easy, and at the end of her retort she looked to Veth for backup. Veth was busy trying to catch a few cylinder shapes vials making their way past her face at their butterfly pace. “I get it. You’re here to be the big hero for Veth and your Empire, sorry Caleb. You’re going to have to learn how to share.”

Caleb shook his head, “This is all false-”

Veth snatched a vial, at her touch they lost the translucent shimmer and crashed to the floor at normal speed, “Guys, I know we have a whole metric fuck-ton of unfinished business, but my house isn’t going to return itself to the earth. Also, still don’t know if it’s safe for us to be in here.” 

Jester poked a wooden step stool and it went sailing through the hole in the floor where the cellar door should have been. “Oh shit.”

This tore Caleb’s gaze from Jester’s. He snapped to attention, looking at all the carnage around him, and whipped a spell-book out of the dimensional pocket in his coat. He slammed it to the floor, and went to his knees to begin channeling his magic. 

Jester thought it was a lot like praying. She went on her knees across from him. His eyes flickered up to see her, then back down. He absently reached into his coat to put a ring--with a large pearl attached to it--up to his forehead. “You are,”--he mumbled more unknown words and incantations under his breath--”a persistent fiend, Jester.”

“Veth and I call ourselves: ‘professional pests’.” 

“No- No we don’t, Caleb- Caleb, sir-” Veth’s legs began to levitate out from under her, the lack of gravity was worsening. “Ah, Ah, Aaah, shit, shit, oh shit- Jester, help !” 

“Tell him we’re professional pests!” Jester reached to hold Veth’s ankle as she started to drift by. The halfling slammed into Jester as normal gravity took hold from the contact. Beads, bracelets, horns, braids, and buttons collided. Jester caught Caleb grimacing through his murmuring. 

Jester pushed Veth off and watched as a bit of anti gravity caught the necklace under Caleb’s shirt. It was the amber colored one, with the delicate rope. He was furiously chanting, beads of sweat accumulating on his forehead, and smoke rising from his hands. Still emboldened by his reaction to her--and by the night prior with her stealing his bed--Jester reached forward and slipped the floating necklace back under his shirt. She brushed his neck accidentally, carelessly really. 

She had felt: a tiny mole, a hint of stubble near the chin, and a beating pulse. He was impossibly warm too. Jester shook her head and pulled away. That sensation, it had left a lingering taste in her mind. And for the first time in her life she considered maybe keeping her hands to herself. 

She hadn’t realized that touching a mage while they channeled spells could feel abnormal. _Yes, that’s what that was. It was his magic._

Caleb pulled the ring away from his head and whispered to himself, “it’s not orthodox.”

“What did you do?” Veth asked, looking to Jester and then back at Caleb. Jester squeezed her own wrist. She needed to focus. Floating house and Veth were the priority right now. 

Caleb waved his hand at them--to Jester’s relief not affected by her weird neck brush--looking for the right words and slipping back into Zemnian, “ _Nicht Kashrus..._ Fuck, fuck, fuck !”

“I understood that last part.” Veth grimaced. “I’m gonna be honest, Sir Widogast, we don’t have the best house insurance, and I don’t think a floating house is gonna be covered in our deductible.”

“It is not of the eight schools of magic! I don’t even know where to begin dispelling!” He cursed again, and a floating, glass jar of creme hit him from behind. He groaned, but held his agitation when he caught sight of Veth. 

Veth swallowed, now serious after her joke, “So, no more house.”

In the woods, many months before this, Jester had found a little halfling woman stumbling in the dark. They’d made quick work of those goblins, together of course. But it had not ended there. Veth and her had become a team, detective, pranksters. 

Jester remembered the start of this. She remembered the hope Veth had placed in her. 

_I’m sorry, but your hope is misplaced. It is. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t be what you want, Veth._

The floorboards groaned as Caleb found his voice, still kneeling in front of his spell book, “I will save your house.”

“And if you don’t?” Veth crossed her arms and at that juncture Jester could tell Veth was nearing shouting. It was a rare trait--anger--but it wasn’t uncharacteristic of Veth. “Do you even know how long it took us to get this place? Do you even care that we dreamed about this as kids? This isn’t just some halfling couple’s laboratory; this is our _home_.”

Caleb gave Veth a long and hard look. Jester decided to throw him a life line, “I can help...please let me help, Caleb.” 

She understood his skepticism. It was valid, probably necessary for a mage like him. It didn’t change though, that she could see his walls, chipped and failing. If he had asked her to assist him and find the Cult of the Angel of Irons, then she could deduce that a similar necessity in protecting the Brenattos was at work. He shook his head at her, “my magic is different than yours. You are a conduit, I am a mixing pot.”

“Hey!” Veth interjected. “Jester could have killed you whenever she wanted.”

Caleb flinched at that.

“I love food. I’m sure I can work mixing in a pot; it can’t be hard,” Jester poked a bubble of the ichor magic. “I bet you’ve seen weirder than this, anyway.”

_Believe in me. Believe in me. Believe in-_

Jester’s dad, and sometimes her mama too, feared that she couldn’t see the big pictures, the tiny details. It was that she struggled to see why the solutions should be so convoluted. They would never say ‘Jester your stupid’ or ‘Jester you’re naive’. They didn’t have to. 

_I’m a painter! I’m a cleric! I do see. I see it all. Even if the hope is misplaced, your pitying concern doesn’t help!_

Caleb closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and then exhaling, “I have one idea.” 

Jester and Veth waited for him to continue. They looked at each other. Stared at him. Veth yelled, “any day now, Widogast?!” 

Caleb held up his index finger, sharply puncturing and gesturing like he was a conductor. “I never said it was a good idea. In fact, foolhardy is the basis of it.” 

“Okay, lay it on us,” Jester said and scooted closer, reading the sigils in his book from an upside down perspective. 

“Feather Fall is a Transmutation spell most Academy children learn right after they complete their three cantrips; it is the art of slowing and decreasing the velocity in which another creature falls. Levitate falls under the same school and can work with fifty pounds or more.”

Jester flapped her hands, “So you’re going to cast Feather Fall on the house--and the spell from this is already affecting the house and can’t stack !” 

Caleb’s lips curved upwards, barely. “Yes, _ja_ , but I don’t have forty-five-hundred kilograms of feathers, my arcane focus is well- that is a story for another time. And to edit a spell like this--even such a little spell--takes magical ink and I don’t have enough on me to do the work in my spell book…”

Jester squealed, “I can make it magic! I can make your normal ink magic!” Caleb shook his head and his eyes grew that now familiar wide. She was growing used to his expressions. “I can make water holy! I just need an hour! I can make your ink holy.”

“These are some hefty shenanigans,” Caleb said. 

“Not if you use this squid ink shit…It’s a substitute.” Veth piped up, surprising Caleb and Jester. Veth blushed at the attention and rubbed her cheeks. “What?! I’m my husband’s assistant!”

“Once again,” Caleb closed his eyes tightly, but still summoned his pen. “A very dangerous gambit, lots of shenanigans.”

\-----------------------------

Jester prayed over the ink for an hour, keeping herself from snapping at Caleb and Veth who were getting antsy in the still floating house. A book and a few more jars crashed to the floor, and the sound they made was a deafening reminder that they had no clue how any of this was working. The ichor was beginning to seem like a taunt. 

The Traveler had covered Jester’s hands while she squeezed the ink-wells, and there had been a small flash. Caleb had not waited for them, and had begun to work in the apothecary store-front. He’d thrust rope into Jester’s hands saying: “...For the floating, just in case.”

Jester smirked and lifted one foot, then the other. She was going to swim through the house.

“Okay, but uh-” Veth was using a broom to waft the clouds into a black cauldron Jester had found near the back door, it’s handle caught on the porch post as it tried to escape the house. Jester had caught a look at the audience below them. The whole village seemed to be there, represented by tiny dots and shouting masses. How much time had they wasted? “-what’s the deal?”

Jester was amazed at the gunk, sometimes it was liquid and sometimes it was gaseous, but it was consistently like looking at a painting of stars against the night sky, “I’m saving your home. That’s the deal.”

Veth looked out into the shop area; Caleb was furiously using the ink Jester had blessed for him. He’d gone trance-like while he attempted to hack and slash at the mechanics of his magic. Jester followed Veth’s attention and realized the mage was bouncing his leg while he worked. 

_I do that too sometimes._

Veth grabbed Jester’s wrist, “No, what’s the _deal_? How did you- Did you wipe his mind somehow? First time I met him he was ready to wring your neck in front of a crowd of Rexxentrum nobles.”

Jester almost ripped her hand away, almost. “I wouldn’t modify his memories unless we absolutely had to, and if he was actually super evil, okay? Okay?” 

Veth pursed her lips. “Hm.”

Jester pulled more goop into the cauldron, with more force than necessary, “Why didn’t you come to me first for help? Are you mad at me?” _She was still willing to defend me back there with Caleb, but why isn’t she willing to let me defend her?_

“No, no, no, Jester...It was funny, really,” Veth bit her lip. “Okay, so don’t laugh, but I was spiraling a bit.”

“That’s not funny.” 

“It was funny because- well, shit. It was funny because I took the advice of the Traveler, and he said to go to Ermendrud, or Caleb…Can you stop looking at me that way, Jester. I feel like you’re about to eat me when you grin like that.” 

Jester leaned inches from Veth’s face floating in front of her. Her weighted worries and mood lifted off of her like the gravity had, “Veth Brenatto took the advice of the Traveler?”

_She wouldn’t leave you. You’re fine. You’re fine._

Veth leaned her head against the broom handle, pausing the task at hand. The handle was sized for humans so she looked comically dwarfed by it. “Look, it wasn’t only him. I don’t know what you did to Widogast, but you did something to me too; yeah I’ll admit it. I’ve been collecting magical shit in my cooking pots for the last hour, and before that I was pranking my entire hometown, and even before that I was killing goblins in the woods with you...for the love of the gods, stop grinning. Your face is gonna freeze like that and you’ll be sorry. What I’m saying is I’m sober right now, but I’m also not afraid. Despite the disturbing--and it is _disturbing_ \--lack of anything under us, I’m not afraid.”

Jester had discovered fear took many forms. She’d felt a few of them, shared a few of them with Veth. It befuddled Jester to think of always living in fear. It was relatable, though, to be living invisibly. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that you’re already brave, Veth.” 

Veth sighed, “Yeah? Well you too, Jessie. Even if you and your weird god creep me out too.” 

Jester smiled, glad that Veth met her after her time in Zadash. After she’d had her brush with fear. A Jester that had only recently learned how cruel people could be...that wouldn’t have been very helpful. “Well, I _am_ the bravest person in the world, Veth.” 

\-------------------------------------------------------------

_Bren_

It was an unknown school of magic. He could hear his master’s frustration, Eudowolf’s smart-ass comment, or Astrid’s intrigue with Bren’s inability to decipher the basis of the distilment’s power. A childish and petulant feeling, the same one that he’d shamed over for years, for the Assembly had come over him as he considered that this could have all been avoided if he had _actually_ been briefed on any of this. 

_No, I’m just a mad creature. A disgrace to them. No matter my accomplishments, no matter that I could give them everything and more. No matter, because all I will ever be is the son of nothing. The son of sacrilegious cultists, who is still obsessed with their deaths--their innocence that only I can see._

He growled and pushed his anti-divination amulet back under his shirt as it tried to escape through the tidal currents of anti-gravity. The other necklace, the chain representing his geas, did not move. 

He crossed out three sigils, reworked them in transmutation, and then pressed the pen and ink into his book like he was forcing the marks from floating away too. Levitate could move up to fifty pounds, but the house was not fifty pounds; feather fall could affect multiple creatures--of varying weights and sizes--but the house was not a creature. He was piecing together symbols, rhymes and riddles. Already the spell spanned two pages of his book. It was like looking at a horrible monster of invention and desperation. 

He could not instantaneously cast it either: he did not have the energy or the power to commit to such a feat, especially with a new spell of his own invention. With a procedure this kind, in normal circumstances, Bren would have spent a few months testing and preparing. Twice during the transcribing, his legs had started to float out from under, and away from him.

Bren was staking his hopes on an unknown magic, and on blessed ink from a foreign god. He mentally kicked himself.

“Caleb!” Lavorre swam towards him catching his ink-well as it began to leave his proximity. He stilled his face, trying not to let her notice that he’d been biting the inside of his cheek raw. “We done yet?”

_“Magic is a mouthy servant. You master it with a riding crop; a whip, barbed and with no room for leniency.”_

Trent Ikithon taught that first metaphor to all of the prized students in his care. _My master. My master. My master._ Bren could not shake the sensation that _he_ was the one being controlled by his magic, his emotions, his lack of foresight. 

When they’d entered the house, Jester Lavorre had caught him completely off guard-- _again_. Over and over again. He’d told her to stay away not because she didn’t have the power to aid and assist...but because he did not understand how he was acting around her. She did something to him, made him sloppy and willing to give this ludicrous plan the time of day. 

_It’s not that. It can’t be that cliche’. You’ve been alone long enough that you’re prescribing little stresses as something else. It’s not that._

He had needed to be himself, or well...he had needed to be Brennon Ermendrud. He had needed to look Veth Brenatto in the eye, tell her that her house was lost and that he would recommend moving the operation to Rexxentrum. He should have negotiated and put forth that her transgressions with Lavorre could be worked around, forgiven even. 

_She saw you. Veth Brenatto knows._

It stood that around Jester Lavorre he struggled to be Brennon Ermendrud. 

Yet, he was not broken enough to not have the Assembly realize the halfling couple needed more attention. They would be happier in Rexxentrum. They would be safe in Rexxentrum. If he had just done the right thing and not been a selfish, obsessed lunatic than-

“It looks pretty,” Jester was tilting a cauldron back and forth, filled with the contents that had vexed his Identification spell. 

She was right. It was alluring to look at: a black liquid sea dotted with blips of light purple and white speckles. Looking at his distorted reflection in the cauldron gave him pause, a realization that if he failed then there would not be a second chance to experiment with the liquid, no chance for him to give another shot of applying a school of magic to it.

He swallowed the thought, realizing that the curiosity would go down like a lead balloon--and so would Veth’s house. “Is that all of it ?” 

“I think so,” Jester floated close to his face; he could smell her breath. It was a claustrophobic invasion of his privacy. The woman had no sense of space. “Thank you.”

“ _Was?_ P-Pardon?” 

“For making the right choice.” Jester dipped her finger into the cauldron, Bren swore under his breath as she did so. She tapped his nose and he blinked back in shock. “Veth is having more fun than she’s letting on. And she doesn’t hate _you_ , remember that.”

“I don’t care what the woman thinks of me.” _Stare at the bridge of her nose when you lie. Blink to indicate ease when you say it. The words should fit the tone of the other speaker._ “And there is nothing fun about this, _Sheda_.”

“Then you should really consider the next time that you use my nickname. You always drop it when you’re nervous. _”_

_Avoid verbal crutches, ticks, and familiar insults to the opponent._ “Is that so...I’ll have to think of something else, then.” 

Veth pulled herself along the walls, Jester leaned away from his face and Bren felt the acute sense that he’d been caught when Frau Brenatto entered the room. “Okay, that’s all of it I think. House is still floating, but it’s all in the cauldron. Hey, no big deal, but is the Assembly going to cover roof shingles that come off in magic related bullshit.”

“Not bullshit, Veth Brenatto,” Bren placed his hands against the cauldron on either side by the handles. In the space between his elbows his book still rested on the hardwood floor. “Only orchestrated mayhem.”

He began the ritual casting, the runes in his book glowed in turn and the materials in the pot began to diminish. He did not let that victory stumble him. A fluttering joy hit him, so he kept going. The breakthroughs this could facilitate excited him. The first being that arcane ink via a god’s blessing, the second being a ninth school of magic compatible with Transmutation, and the third being the lifting and movement of large obstructions. 

In the corner of his eye he could see Veth opening a window, a jittery and excited movement in her, “It’s working ! Holy shit, he’s the real deal.”

The home audibly creaked on it’s way down, objects that floated began to rise to the roof in opposition to the shift. 

“Caleb-” Jester was floating beside him. There was movement from his left as he realized she was helping hold the cauldron close to the book. She was actually helping him. 

He recoiled; he could tell she’d been genuine, when he’d been expecting a verbal lashing. He was starting to sweat through his shirt, the coat he wore was sticking to his elbows and arms. And his arms were itching, always itching. 

He knew logically Jester and Veth wouldn’t hurt him if this failed. It was funny; the house crashing would kill them all, but he was more frightened of a smack. Well, not _them_ smacking him. 

_I have to live so that I may show Trent- my master what I’ve accomplished. I have to live to show him this feat._

A small part of him was fidgeting, like Veth exclaiming out the window, or one of his students back home first cupping a globule of magically produced light. Under the discomfort he found a glimmer of why he loved what he did. The half-way point came, the first page finished. The smell of iron filled his nostrils, yet he did not stop when Jester wiped his nose with her sleeve. Veth and her had gone silent, and he was grateful. He could have handled any number of their chatterings, but the few compliments they’d paid him had confused his train of thought and muddled the start. 

He could now taste blood in his mouth, hear the house fighting him, feel a tingling sensation in his hands. Veth and Jester now had both their hands on his shoulders’. 

_Force doesn’t stop the will of gravity._ His vision was tunneling. He wanted to laugh. How long had it been since he laughed? Really laughed, loudly without fear of a pointed look his way. His throat burned and he felt that he would combust. 

_Could a madman do this? Yes, maybe only a madman, ja? They’re right: I’m a liar, untrustworthy, a hayseed’s child, and most importantly mad._

_They were innocent. It was a mistake. It was a mistake!_

_Im Feuer steht das ganze Kind! Miau! Mio! Miau! Mio!_

A hand was shaking his shoulder, the last of the sigils glowed towards the end of the page.

_Wo sind die armen Eltern? Wo?_

\-----------------------------------------

_Veth_

Veth and Jester screamed the five feet unaccounted for in the spell, as Caleb’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and furniture crashed around them. She hit the hardwood floor in a manner fit for someone who’d spent the whole day flying. Wonders never seemed to cease. 

The thud and impact rocketed through the frame of her house. Veth buried her head against her arms, refusing to look at the damage. From outside the house she could hear shouting, lots of it. 

“Veth, Veth,” Jester tugged on her arms. “It’s okay, look.” 

“You better not be lying.” Veth’s heart couldn’t take much more. If her house was destroyed, all the deflections and jokes in the world might not be able to soften that hit to her. “I swear, Jester, don’t lie to me.”

“Veth, just _look_!”

She raised her head from against her arms. All of their plates and dishes were smashed, alongside many of their jars, also any fragile furniture. The rest of the house was intact, though. 

Jester was grinning again, her sharp smile where you could see her canines. It had worked. Laying face down to the left was Widogast. 

“Oh god is he dead?” Veth yelled. 

“ _Zicke, zacke, zicke-_ -” Widogast rolled onto his back and pinched his bleeding nose. “ _\--zacke, hoi, hoi, hoi._ This has been a strange day….”

The three of them only breathed for a moment. From their side of the porch windows, luckily covered with falling, mangled drapes, Veth saw there were the shadows of three men with the signature crossbows and halberds of Crownsguards. 

“By order of the Crown,” The door was flimsy and wouldn’t hold them for long. “Is anyone in there?” The noises of the crowd were muffled, but growing louder. 

“I will go talk to them,” Widogast pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Hang on.”

Veth crawled to Widogast, doing her best to keep her whisper consistent, “No, no, you look like you just got the shit kicked out of you. And if they find out about the Assembly’s business, who will be blamed? Yeah, fuck off with any of your chivalry.”

Widogast pulled out a handkerchief from inside his coat and tried to clean up his face, “you swear too much.” 

“I’ve got plenty on layaway, wait and see.” 

“Who is present?” The head of the guard outside shouted. “Open up at once, or we will be forced to enter.”

Widogast and Jester rolled their eyes in unison. Veth hated their obstinance. “I didn’t spend the whole day being flown about and levitating to get arrested in front of my husband and all of our customers.”

“I can agree with that sentiment,” Caleb started to stand, his legs wobbled the entire way up. “I fear that I am all out of clever tricks, _Frau_ Lavorre and _Frau_ Brenatto. Unless those tricks involve a fight…”

“I think it’s my turn for a crazy idea.” Jester clasped her hands together. “What’s the most evil looking thing you can think of.”

_Derogna’s sneer, goblins chasing me, my father on a bender, my brother angrily telling me I’m no one._ Veth's picture came out clearer than she would have thought if someone had asked her this question a year ago, maybe longer, “A witch…”

“What does she look like? Is she pretty or ugly?” Jester asked, getting into it and rushing Veth as pounding could be heard at the door. 

“I think she’s pretty?” So the goblins had been ugly, yeah, but Veth was ugly too. “Yeah, and with those super red lipstick lips.”

Jester smiled and snapped her fingers. Before them now stood a beautiful woman with blonde hair, a straight nose, and high cheek-bones. She was wearing silver robes with chains and wings all around them. 

Widogast swallowed, his throat bobbed, “what do you have planned, Lavorre?” 

A heavy object collided with Veth’s front door. A boot, or the hilt of a halberd, perhaps. Jester turned to Caleb and Veth, “Run! I’ll distract them, Veth, take him to the temple.” 

“ _Nein_ , I’m not running like a criminal-” 

Veth grabbed Widogast’s hand as a second thud hit the door, a crack was in the wood longer than Veth’s arm. 

_I’m not leaving you. Yeza was never a fighter. Not all people should be fighters. Not all people_ must _be fighters._

Veth pulled at Widogast’s hand, “We’re not running, we just need to hide for a moment.” Widogast did not fight her. She could tell he was grappling internally. “Trust us one more time. One more time, Caleb, please.”

He caved then, and she was guiding him to the torn up kitchen. Jester poofed away, hopefully this had not been a long con. She was disappearing close by...Not leaving them. 

_How stupid would you feel if she’d been pretending to be your friend this entire time. Well, maybe I wouldn’t feel as bad._ Veth opened a lower cabinet in the kitchen, taped on the inside of the door were extra smoke bombs, and a slingshot that Jester had given her. All of it was in case of goblins. _If a mage from the Assembly can fall for Jester Lavorre, then it’s not my fault if she betrays us here._

_Haven’t used this since Jester and I were in the woods._

Any judgement of the smoke bombs or slingshot died on Widogast’s voice the second they heard booming and maniacal laughing outside. “What is that woman doing ?!” He hissed. 

“Being Jester, common, let’s go help her.” 

The pounding at her door had stopped. Jester had drawn the attention of the guards, and hopefully the entire village. 

They exited from the back door. They turned as they left, looked up, and saw Jester in her disguise, amplifying her voice somehow and performing a monologue at the crowd from the roof. 

Veth elbowed Widogast’s knee, “Pick up your jaw from the floor or something is gonna fly in your mouth.”

Jester had leaned into the roll of evil sorceress, she was waving her hands about and dodging every crossbow bolt now embedded in Veth’s roof, “Bask in the glory of the Angel of Irons, your puny houses mean nothing to the power of her evil and her terror and her triumph and uh-”

On cue, Caleb pulled out a copper wire, and whispered into it, “may you flawed masses choke upon your woes.”

“Yeah! Eat shit and choke on your woes.” 

Veth rolled her eyes, “Okay, fancy-pants, Widogast, can you give me a little fire?”

“Oh, _ja..._ this won’t hurt those guards will it?”

“Ha, only if they try and smoke em” Her tongue felt looser, her jokes easier, the mood despite the danger and fast pace felt natural. Veth could feel her face becoming sore from smiling. 

Widogast tapped the smoke bomb Veth had positioned in the slingshot, not without hesitation. Jester luckily seemed to still have the crowd entranced with her shouting. Veth aimed for her feet, held the position, breathed and fired. The hissing smoke landed directly on target. 

Widogast whistled, “I see a sword was not what you needed.”

“Shut up, we need to give her enough smoke to escape with us.” Veth was calculating the next target. Jester and the Traveler were usually nearby to give her blessings galore, ensuring she’d always somehow hit. She was having fun, and somehow still found a way to snag against her desire to hide, the knowledge that she was not.

Not anything really. Just a little woman with a slingshot. 

“Come over here,” Widogast ushered her to the side of the house. From this angle they could tell the town was eating up every word of Jester’s rant. “Try it now.”

The second smoke bomb landed, the two of them were causing a coughing fit from residents and Jester alike. 

Widogast pulled out the copper wire again, frowning at the reactions towards the smoke bomb, “That’s enough, we’re running into the woods now. Hurry up.”

“We’re not leaving her!” Veth dug her nails into Widogast’s thigh. “Someone’s going to need to be the shoulder you lean on when we run.”

His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked pale, “we won’t. Unless she puts us both in critical danger, we won’t. I promise...I still have much I need from her.”

Veth bit into her lip. He was still an asshole in some ways it seemed. Without even taking look to aim, she shot the last smoke bomb; she kept her eyes on him the entire time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came out longer than I expected. Can't believe this story has made it to forty thousand words. Big thanks again to everyone who has contributed and helped me. The encouragement and responses have been so wonderful.


	10. Post Revisions

_Jester_

This wasn’t a performance at the Lavish Chateau, and it was not a plan put together by her father. Her parents had delicate touches in their fields of work. On top of the roof, laughing and casting her Thaumaturgy at the crowd, Jester had to remind herself that these people would not be applauding when she took her bow to escape.

They would have such wonderful stories to tell, though, she thought. This would be a ghost story told around a fire, a spooky song for the children while they played. 

_I don’t know if I like that._

Arrows tore past her, one caught on her disguise and the illusion faltered at her shoes. She was starting to grow nervous, the familiar whoosh of projectiles sailing close to her ears and body had her full of giddy panic. And when she began to falter, a message from Caleb came to help with the script. 

_Yeah, orchestrated mayhem. Like what Caleb called magic. All of it is orchestrated mayhem._

She counted three smoke bombs, before turning to make her descent from the roof. She had not accounted for the smoke being a problem for her as well as the villagers. She quickly shoved her sleeve over her mouth, in almost sync with a pinch against her calf. Her heel twisted and she was falling, but not hitting the shingles off the roof as she expected. 

Instead there was smoke, her stomach felt momentarily nauseous with free-fall before she slammed into the steps of the backyard porch. Immediate shocks went through her body, she turned to see another arrow in her back as well. 

“You are a mess,” two sets of hands were helping her up, and she was selfishly grateful they had not taken her advice to flee. “Careful with her, Veth.” Jester couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes; there was smoke stinging her mouth and nose, but she could hear Veth coughing violently. “To my house, Jester, my house gives us an alibi.”

Veth’s hand, which had been tightly bound to Jester’s stockings, slipped free from her. Jester predicted what Veth would say next, “My husband…Jester, I have to go make sure he’s okay.”

“It would be suspicious if you were gone.” Caleb sounded suddenly reluctant to leave too. 

It was the right choice. And Jester didn’t want her to make it. Still, she gathered herself and said, “the Traveler will be watching over you, I promise.”

Jester leaned against Caleb, this close she could feel his stomach contracting with shallow breaths. Again, there was the unusual feeling of being this close. Caleb spoke to Veth behind a muffled sleeve, blocking smoke as best he could, “I will return for you both. Do not let the Crownsguards intimidate you; they are bluster and no blow.” Jester smirked at that. She did not hear Veth leave, and she was proud. Veth was getting stronger everyday, and might have continued growing more cunning, more crafty, even without Jester’s help. “Your smile worries me, Jester Lavorre. I have never felt so worried over a smile.” 

“Then you’re in for a big surprise,” Jester squeezed his bicep. “You ready?”

He made a non-committal sound of worry, somehow the spell took that as a ‘yes’. Maybe he wouldn’t notice if she didn’t take them back to his home right away. She wanted a warm bath, something to wash away the frightened looks the villagers had given her. She could not do that in the prison Caleb lived in; it’s tiny walls and narrow bed were reminders of the night she’d seen his wounds. And in her muddled thoughts, she became distracted from what he’d asked of her. She went forward to pursue the thoughts, knowing they were not teleporting to his home, but not doing anything to solve that problem. 

They jumped, once, twice, a third time at Caleb’s urging despite how he was shivering in the heat of summer. There was smoke, then an apple orchard in the tillage area, and then wheat and open expanses. Smoke bombs, pranks, trios, arrows lodged into her body; all things came in threes when it really came down to the wire. 

They were a little over two miles from Felderwin, closer to the tillage and closer to her temple. The yellow of the fields rippled like a sea, the air smelled of afternoon heat and Jester had a victorious feeling thrumming about her. The come down of her escape would hit soon. She wiped her eyes to see Caleb was glaring at her, like a wounded animal. “You lied to me,” he roughly removed himself from her grasp and stumbled through the tall yellow grass, falling to his knees a few feet away from her and looking around for the way back to Felderwin. He clutched his stomach and made a pained moaning. “You really are an awful, little brat. You run amok as if this is all a game, ruining that poor woman’s life, her marriage, her reputation and future!”

Jester felt her face flush with rage. She ignored the growing pain from the arrows in her body and stamped over to Caleb bent pathetically on the ground. 

“I was headed home. You never said _which_ home.” He had technically, but she was still shrugging off that she wished Veth hadn’t gone back to her husband. Veth wasn’t leaving her for Caleb, but she certainly had never been Jester’s to begin with. Jester had convinced herself that after their adventures fighting goblins, they could stay together, keep being a team. She hated sharing. It was nasty and childish, and she recognized it. 

Caleb on his knees was suddenly strange and silent, composing himself at a distance Jester realized she could not reach. She could apologize, explain that she wanted to go back to a place where she was a lord of her own, a place that the Traveler had made safe and secure. 

Then, a horrible pinching sensation came from her back, keeping her from defending herself properly at his insult, or even finding a way to apologize. She felt her face growing hotter, her throat closing up. Jester twisted her legs into a sitting position, ignoring the protest of her back. The arrow brushed her upper thigh as she placed her legs into a shape like she was riding side-saddle. 

Caleb stared at her, no longer glaring, but not saying anything. Jester was angry enough that she was tempted to push her magic for another Dimension Door, stranding him here in the tall grass.

Yet, even that idea was too foolish for her, there was a temple to care for, and wounds that needed fixing. She’d sent the Traveler with Veth, so he wasn’t here to talk her through pulling out the arrow. Jester bit her lip, and wiped her nose before taking a deep breath. 

_I thought gods were everywhere all at once..._ Jester shook that thought away, a faithless thought. 

Caleb started moving towards her, forgetting his anger, “Stop, Lavorre-” She ripped free the arrow, and let out a wild yell that flew into the plains, bouncing off of nothing and being swallowed into the wind. These were sharper points than the one’s crafted by goblins. Jester remembered the warnings from sailors by the docks of her home, they’d told her to watch for fish hooks and the danger of getting a barbed “You’re going to alert the whole village,” he hissed at her. Caleb was pushing pressure into her ankle as she waved her hand over the wound, and warmth numbed the pain. She knew without her magic that ripping out an arrow was a suicidal choice; she knew and yet she did it anyway. 

“T-Taadaa…” Jester dreaded the next two arrows; no one was here to reach her back. 

“You need to undo your corset, at least loosen it,” except he was here. Caleb was holding his hands at his sides, balled into tight fists. Leaned forward on his knees, he had braved coming closer. He was waiting for her to ask. She didn’t want him touching her, having not yet parsed what had happened in Veth's house. But he outlasted her, his extreme patience and the pain in her body got the better of her. Jester nodded once, holding her breath as he gracefully scooted towards her, and she turned her back to him. “How many of these do you have?” He asked about her green cloak, finding a way to tear and maneuver it around the arrows lodged into her back. 

_It’s not fair, he knows how to be slow and gentle._

He did not struggle with her corset like she assumed he would, in fact he was deft at taking it apart. Jester felt the pressure loosen, and could not hold back a whine as her muscles spasmed again. Caleb stopped at that, waited again for her to nod, and give him permission to continue. “You will not ice me if this hurts?” He asked. Jester shook her head back and forth. “Good, I am going to enlarge the wound to remove it, use your magic quickly.”

“What?! Just rip it out!” He did not listen to her. Jester screamed into her elbow as another sharp object entered her back, clashing against the arrow head. And as quickly as it was there, the weight and pinching sensation vanished. She murmured another spell and the blood flowing down her back stopped. She turned to see him wiping gore off a dagger before putting it into his coat dimension. Jester snarled at him,“I told you to just rip it out!”

“And I told you to take me back to my base, where I have surgical tools that could have helped you properly with these arrows. Alas, you did not clarify how you wanted me to ‘rip it out’.” He held his hands up in mock surrender, like he hadn’t just carved into her like a piece of meat. Jester wished she had used her Hellish Rebuke on him. She showed him a few rude gestures, which he ignored, and she began to restring her corset huffing and throwing a fit without a mirror. And as she expected, he waited for her to finally give up and ask for his help. “Why did you take us here instead of my base?”

“Tell me what 'sheda' means and I’ll maybe tell you,” Jester fidgeted, turning to stick her tongue out at him while he worked on getting her dress put together. “Where did you even learn to tie a corset?”

“The same place that taught you how to negotiate,” he momentarily backed away, anticipating her attempt to back kick him. He was taking his time assembling the knots. “There was a term for that which was outside the purview of god...that which was not a finished creation, so it ran free. That is _sheda,_ and that is _lilin,_ and when you tried to knock my head off with a piece of confectionery that was you.” 

Jester’s stomach turned, “a demon, then.”

“No, not a demon. That is an oversimplification,” he let his hands fall away from her back for a moment, collecting his thoughts and then slowly having them return. Jester felt like this was the most she’d heard him speak. “The _shed_ are wicked, but not always demons; only villainous because they were not molded by god, or finished by god. Spirits who take form, eat and drink, but are inherently foreign.” He pulled her corset strings and Jester startled a bit at the tightness, he straightened a bow at her back and held his hands respectfully clasped when he was finished. If she imagined it enough, he would be the spitting image of a servant in posture and attention. He had the tone of a quiet lecturer, the attention of a loyal butler, and the quick hands of a spell-caster. He was still crumpled from the expanding of power to lower Veth’s house, but he made a show of keeping himself from ripping apart.

Jester kept herself from reaching to stroke one of her horns, rub away the sensation at how she’d let him get close to her again. Instead, she crossed her arms and snorted at him, “still a bad guy, though.” 

He cocked his head to the side, “just a night ago you told me that you wished to be feared by all the Empire. And today with your magic you blessed the ink I used. Now you waver, for some unknown reason…” Jester felt her face growing hotter, the summer cicadas had gone quiet. Caleb’s eyes roamed over her, and then his head straightened. “You’re so sensitive.”

She did not appreciate him analyzing her, poking at her existence as he was. He was right, and that made her angrier. “And you look like you’re about to pass out.” 

“That is true too.” His passive-aggressive compliance dripped from his words. He was standing, doing his best to look the part of someone who had only a few moments ago yelled at her and commanded her to take him back to his house. “You brought us here impulsively, to return to your temple. To kidnap me, that is what you plan? Or were you frightened, frightened of the crowd and the guards.”

They went back and forth at that. He stumbled over returning to Felderwin and claiming his home had more resources. She argued that he needed healing, healing that she could only give in the enhanced magic of her temple. Their exchanges were ghosts of dialogue they had the night prior. And just like last night, he gave way to her, actually agreeing to follow her to the temple. It was shocking how pliable he was to her arguments and ideas. He was slow-moving, and twice denied her letting him lean on her shoulder. Only a few feet from the woods did he concede. 

“ _You’ve wrapped him around your finger,”_ The Traveler slotted back into place beside her, and Jester hoped that meant he had gone to aid Veth in whatever husband-saving needed to be done. She shook her head; Veth loved Yeza and Jester would grow to see that her choices were right. Even if they hurt a bit. They’d been balancing pranks and domestic issues for months now, but a small part of her had wanted them to all still run together into the woods. “ _I’m so proud of you: scaring villagers, transforming into animals, kidnapping humans for yourself. You never cease to amaze me, you spoil me with these antics.”_

Before they entered the woods, Jester stopped and turned to Caleb, “Is ‘sheda’ Zemnian?”

He considered her before answering, “Yes, but an old dialect of it, from a sect of the Zemniaz people...”

“That makes sense, when you speak Zemnian you sound like an old man.”

His legs wobbled as he tried to make himself stand independent of her help; he gave up and looked out into the fields, “I am slowly, ever so slowly, beginning to like you, so please don’t fuck it up.”

  
  


_\--------------------------------------------------------_

_Veth_

She had wanted to go with Caleb and Jester. Selfishness could now be added to her list of character flaws. 

_Great._

Instead, she turned around and slipped into a crowd of panicking halflings and humans. Unnoticed was the status she occupied, but among the many weird realizations of the day, she was coming to appreciate it. Jester had done her signature disappearance; and like a clap of thunder scaring a herd of horses, townsfolk and guards alike stumbled through the streets. 

“Return to your homes!” The watchmaster himself had decided to make a public appearance, shouting and trying to regain order in the crowd. Funny, he’d not come to the shop after Veth climbed her way out of the woods. 

“ _T_ _his feels like home. Less pixies, and a bit more rustic, but the vibe is familiar.”_ Why the Traveler was tag teamed with her, and not Jester, Veth could not guess. She hoped he was actually omnipotent, enough to ensure Widogast didn’t reveal a long and drawn out plan to catch Jester. Thinking in the heat of the chaos had Veth considering how weird the two had been acting. They were both already strange; a dangerously quiet mage from the capital, and a priestess hermit in the woods were fairy tale creatures that had their quirks pre-built. It was the rumor from Edith, and the way Widogast conceded at every turn that had Veth pondering them more. 

_Focus, Veth! Husband! Husband! Where is my husband?_

Veth found herself in front of the apothecary, having effortlessly gone around their neighbors' homes. Colorful smoke lingered in the air still. Their house slumped forward, and with the audience now running in every direction Veth was able to find him standing in front of their home looking lost... His glasses were broken, just like the night they’d both been taken. Yeza, her lovely and normal husband, painfully kind, safe, and mundane seemed to constantly be a damsel.

“Hey babe,” Veth tried not to startle him. She wondered how scared he’d been to watch the house come cascading down, and she felt dumb at her mistake of thinking he’d still been in there. “Long day?”

He startled despite Veth’s intentions, but when he realized it was her, he threw his arms around her neck. He pressed messy kisses to her forehead in the middle of a village in turmoil and she laughed as he ranted his gratitude over her not being trampled by the crowd, by the luck of her being with Old Lady Edith when it all happened. “I don’t understand,” he babbled. “I was almost finished, but the liquid started expanding, and then it started leaking _upwards_ , Veth. Oh, Veth, you’ll never believe it, the house and everything tore from the hinges and I ran out and got the Crownsguards, but there was a crowd and you know how I hate crowds. You were right, Veth; the Assembly and all this business with war and magic is too much! I don’t know what to do, and Ermendrud seems nice, but Lady Derogna she- Oh gods, Veth, I should have never- I’m so sorry for all the lies and the secrets-

She kissed him so he’d shut up, so she could balance the want to be more than Veth, but still be his wife. She had caught another taste of Jester and Caleb’s world, was drunk on it still. So she needed to remember what was at stake. That, and he had no right apologizing to her. “Yeza, I’m- I need to tell you-”

He wasn’t looking at her, she shook his shoulders confused at what was competing with her for his attention. Veth turned, and behind her Starosta Whisperthin and two older looking Crownsguards. 

\-----------------------------------

“We didn’t do anything wrong, nothing of the sort wrong; absolutely nothing wrong happened,” Yeza murmured the way to the Starosta’s chambers, a building as close to being a mansion if there was ever such a place in Felderwin. It had three whole stories, and supposedly a basement jail too. Veth was glad for the antics in the streets, no one noticed them being led to their judgment. 

_“Please, do you really care at this point?”_ the Traveler had yet to leave. 

A year ago, being almost, but not entirely arrested, would have killed Veth where she stood. Her father had been a man of little patience and infinite vices: booze, swearing, missing harvest days, quick to throw a fit if Veth or her brother came home in a good mood. Even he had never been arrested. 

_I don’t care._ Yeza was sweating a river through his shirt. _What happened to me?_

They were not immediately placed in the basement jail, and in Veth’s ear the Traveler whispered that this was probably a good sign. 

Theanor Whisperthin was a halfling; his office reflected that allowing Veth and Yeza to fit comfortably in the chairs in front of his desk. That was where the comfort ended. He was a bit taller than Veth, and had the same color of hair as Yeza. That was where the similarities also ended. He was nearing seventy, and like most halflings would not be showing his age until he reached a century. He's been elected to the position long before Veth or Yeza had been born, they rarely saw the man say for harvest days, tax time, or festivals. Like his ‘mansion’ home he was the closest thing Felderwin had to a nobleman. 

“Tea?” Whisperthin asked. Veth saw red as her husband paled. Were they really going to keep up social etiquette? It was always tea with these people. 

“No thank you,” Veth knew an attitude would get them nowhere; it was difficult being meek after she’d flown through the city. Whisperthin was _no one._ He couldn’t do magic, or create chemical wonders, or speak daily with a god. All his power, which would have once scared her, was flimsy and weak like Caleb in the face of Jester's requests. “No offense, but our house just landed and it would be really awkward to keep it waiting.”

Whisperthin adjusted his coat, clearly not expecting that from her. Veth sat on her hands to keep them from twisting. Whisperthin motioned for the Crownsguards to leave the room, and they reluctantly did so. 

_Okay, okay, maybe I am a bit scared. Widogast said not to let these people intimidate me, but he can fly, so cheap advice, really._

“Mr.Brenatto- Yeza,” Whisperthin turned his attention away from Veth; and like so many meetings with Vess Derogna, Veth could read the intent. He did not care about her, did not see her and never would. “Did you know that I was the one who recommended you to the Cerberus Assembly?”

Yeza blinked a few times and responded, “no sir.”

Whisperthin paused, clasping his hands. He was agitated, “did you consider the timing of the Assembly’s entrance into your life, fortuitous isn’t it? A war comes, taxes grow higher, and you having never done a day’s work in the fields due to your temperament Yeza-”

“Get on with it,” Veth raised her voice and both men looked at her in shock. Veth had fought too many goblins; it was too late for her to be anything, but this. “We’re in trouble, we get it. There’s nothing we can do about it, it happened. It’s done now, though, so get to your point.”

Whisperthin wrinkled his nose at her, “The Assembly for a brief time had considered relocating you both to Rexxentrum. I’m beginning to believe that would be the best.” 

Veth almost laughed. The Starosta was acting like he was exiling them to the Nine Hells. She knew Jester had changed her, _really_ knew now. She could and would leave this place behind without worry. What had this town given her besides heart ache, ostracization and-

Yeza was looking down at his hands, heartbroken and still tied to the village they’d grown up in. He hadn’t found a cleric in the woods to open his eyes, the thrill of a slingshot with smoke bombs, or a wizard that scared him enough to make him realize they were similar. Veth had, and if all the lies and half-truths between them could be made into something good then Veth would try, and a crazy part of her felt she would win. 

“Fine,” Veth shrugged. 

“Fine?” Whisperthin said. 

“I guess we’ll be taking the wizard back with us too, Theanor. Real shame that he won’t be here next time you get attacked by cultists, or the Cricks.” She was throwing out that term, only half knowing it. Veth had never been great with geography, but she knew to the east of the Empire lay the wastes, a place that had declared war on them, and the myth of Cricks and their queen. 

The word had enough weight to make Whisperthin blunder, “what do you mean?”

“I mean...look, we’re in the middle of a war, weird shit is bound to happen. I’m saying, right now there’s a very powerful wizard and he’s protecting us; and _also_ Felderwin.” The office was deathly silent. It was also only partially true, Veth still had no clue if Caleb Widogast’s ‘generosity’ extended to Felderwin as well. Veth cleared her own throat, shocked at herself. In her list of things she was not, she was definitely not good at talking. 

“ _Incredibly cheeky, I love it.”_ the Traveler was sitting on the Starosta’s bookshelf, his legs crossed and his cloaked face cupped in his hands. 

Veth felt emboldened to continue, grabbing her husband’s hand she stood up from the chair, “So, if you have any problems with us, Starosta, take em’ up with Bren Aldric _Ermendrud_ after he gets done hunting the thug who attacked our house! Hey, maybe he’ll even deal with the goblins that kidnapped us last Winter.” She pulled Yeza towards the door, “and good day to you, Starosta!”

The Crownsguards at the door gave them puzzling looks, but Veth didn’t give them time to consider any course of action. She pulled her husband into a less hectic, but still brimming with tension town. Yeza looked over his shoulder, “I think you scared him shit-less!”

“Yeah? Good, lets run home before he thinks too hard about arresting us!” 

  
  


_\-------------------------------------_

_Bren_

“Steam?” he asked when Jester pulled him into an innocent looking clearing of the woods with a hodge-podge of architecture that made up a bungalow looking home. She had almost carried him through the woods, the very strange woods. They had shifted, frustrating his perfect sense of direction and eidetic memory to spirals and a tangled mess. He nearly vomited, _nearly_. He knew this was not right, magic danced in his vision. They were still in the forest by Felderwin, but not exactly. 

_If I learn the location of her base, I can then track and make a funnel for those associated with the Angel of Irons. And if I cannot then I can still arrest her._

Jester had talked the entire way to the... _temple?_ It was in no way like the austere houses of worship and churches in Rexxentrum, and so opposite to the extravagance of Zadash’s Platinum Dragon shrines. It made him feel that this was a trap, a challenge dressed in soft paints with quaint shingles. He stared at Jester Lavorre with charms hanging from her ram shaped horns, considering how he had followed her into the woods before actually unraveling her. 

He knew many people who gained power from gods, deities of other planes and such could be communed with. Eudowolf talked about his Raven Queen like a mother, and he was pulled from her belly and accidentally placed in the world as the son of a farmer. 

“Yeah! It’s steam because...Oh, you just have to see for yourself, very sickly wizard.” 

“I am not sickly,” Bren’s vision had been fading in and out since she’d let her Dimensional Door get the better of her. He’d at first assumed she’d done it to be purposefully malicious, but as she’d talked to him, despite his mind’s fuzziness, he had come to a few contrary conclusions. “I am fine, Lavorre. I must contact some people when we arrive.”

“ _Caaaleb_ , the door is over there.” She pointed, and he realized he was headed in the wrong direction. The magic, the strange technology, had also left him a tangled mess. 

_Perhaps the woods were fine, perhaps it was just me..._

They moved towards the entrance, and his legs began to give way again. A childish heat traveled to his cheeks and he shut his eyes against tired, uncontrollable tears. He had not felt this drained since the early days of his training. He said the first thing that came to his defense, “please, please don’t laugh at me.”

Strong, confident arms lifted Bren, and he found himself being carried like a bride by Lavorre. He let out a laugh that was weak to his own ears; she was a small woman, and hilariously strong in contrast to her size. Jester raised her eyebrows at his laugh, pursed her lips, but then began to carry him into the house. 

_In diesem Akt besteht Gefahr...This is a trap, but of a different kind._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A much shorter Caleb pov this week on account of school and also fear that the chapter was becoming too long for me to get out on time with the bi-weekly schedule. Promise that next chapter will be extra spicy and start with his pov.
> 
> Thank you all for the constant feedback, support, and amazing comments.


	11. Waterlogged Pages

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for implied sexual nudity and references to sexual espionage in this chapter.

_Bren_

Bren knew he was magically tapped, whether or not Lavorre would use that against him was another question. 

Lavorre ungracefully dumped Bren on a stone bench, he winced when she untangled his arms from her shoulders. He had been right to be wary; there was no altar, no censers, and the alcove meant for the observance of icons was only filled with pillows and blankets. There were pools of hot water in place of pews and he found himself lost in thought, pondering the inviting hot steam coming from the water. Conjuration magic was the most likely source of their warmth. It drove him wild, head spinning with calculation, considering how much power it took to uphold the temple. He stared, just as he had at her portrait in the locket, at the little blue tiefling responsible, imagining that somehow if he looked long enough she would reveal all of her secrets. 

He tore himself away from the thoughts and went back to analyzing the building. He was reminded of the washrooms back in his Master’s tower, _Ambition’s Call_. And with that memory in his throat, he realized there would be no more lying, no chance to find a way to make this entire mess with Lavorre look any less incriminating than it already was. The chain around his neck was heavy, he reached up to to adjust it and grappled with how to explain the severe misconduct. 

It was a well established trend in the Cerberus Assembly, and amongst the wizards of Rexxentrum, that as you grew more powerful, your hobbies grew more erratic and dangerous. These eccentricities were fine for Derogna who lorded over her ancient tomes, and Tversky who loved her exotic beasts from Xhorhaus. It was that the end goal of clearing his family name had little use to the Crown. Sacrilegious cults and their infiltrating of the king’s lands, though...that could be framed well.

_If only I had the time! They’ll want to know about the house, progress with the Brenatto’s, and what I know of this woman who I’ve saddled myself with._

And there was the issue of...leniency. He’d shown so much of it to the tiefling that it was borderline negligence. 

Lavorre placed--really, slammed-- a wooden basket beside Bren. She got to her knees and started sifting through the half-filled jars of cream, soaps, and oils. Some had labels from the Brenatto Apothecary, and others had the initials ‘M.L’ blown and sculpted into the glass. “Okay,” Jester reached for the heel of his left boot. “Take off your clothes.”

He yanked his leg away from her, “Excuse me?!”

“You can’t take a bath in your shoes and shirt!” She moved to start unbuttoning his pants, but he caught her wrist. He squeezed, giving her enough warning that she let go. 

“I can undress myself...” He paused, warily letting go of her. Bren waited for Lavorre to turn away, give him space, do anything that a normal person would do. Instead, she watched him strip down to his socks, blinking back surprise when he grimaced at the movement. He hesitated the most with his gauntlets, but swallowed his fear and peeled them off, anyway. His body felt spent, his mind still fuzzy, and his dignity gone. He just wanted to sink under the hot water and get some of the promised healing from her strange temple. He needed to recuperate before he sent word back to Rexxentrum. 

He realized she was ogling him. She looked him up and down, and then wordlessly turned to go take off her own clothes. No shame or awkwardness, but a surprising lack of jokes. He found himself pulling his legs closer to his chest, trying to keep a bit of modesty. Bren had trained to create a line between him and his physical form, his flesh, his body. It was something to give to the Empire. He knew it was ugly. It was that he was not supposed to care. 

They had stopped giving him _those_ missions after his master had begun to do more serious tests. It would be awkward for a target to see his patchwork scars, it could blow the entire cover of one's espionage. 

_And after you practically set Guildmaster Arness on fire..._

He was glad Lavorre was occupying the only mirror in the temple. Bren had expected her to run him over the coals with clever word play and innuendos, but she was uncharacteristically silent. And that hurt worse than any tease. He looked down to his chest, seeing the successful surgeries alongside those that needed more fine tuning. There was nowhere to turn, either he looked at Lavorre or himself. 

Lavorre was having an easier time with the corset now that there was a mirror. She made quick work of the bows he’d made alongside her back. Bren remembered looking at an illustration in a book, standing behind Astrid and helping her pull the trap of a garment tight. The other students had maids and women in waiting to help them, but Astrid had only him. He’d been put back into the Academy’s ecosystem, changed after enough time spent in the house for boys, and altered through the metamorphosis that Trent Ikithon had begun with him. And yet, when all else shied away from him, Astrid had coaxed him into her world. It wasn’t long after that, his master then coaxed Astrid into Bren’s. Eudowolf soon followed, and they’d been a trio. 

_For a brief time._

The steam in the temple had grown thicker, but not before he caught a look at her back: there were thin veins of purple all over Jester, like a gnarled tree. 

_Lightening?_

Bren’s only warning for Lavorre running before tucking her legs and leaping into the water was the slap of her feet against the marble floor. An artificial wave splashed towards the bench, followed by her laughter and a long sigh of relief. Bren could not see her body through the water; only her shoulders and head. “Pass me the basket,” Jester swam to the ledge of the pool, her hand opening and closing in a demanding way. She noticed his hesitation as she set the wicker container floating into the pool, “I promise not to drown you.”

“That is not what I am afraid of,” he wasn’t necessarily happy that she was chattering again--it was instead that he was relieved. Her silence at his body had dug up feelings and memories. He needed to clean himself of the weariness, the unknown magic, and prepare for what may come from the Capital. He handed her the basket, keeping his other arm covering as much as possible. He began to lower himself from the bench, to the ledge, and into the pool. His toes dabbled at the warm water, luxurious and wasteful. He noticed Lavorre too late, though, her hand shot out to wrap around his ankle and he was pulled into the water. He shrieked, then came up growling, “That was what I was afraid of.” Bren had not intended to fully submerge himself. Now he would have to take off the bandages around his arms. His arms itched and he found himself hating that he was naked before her. The water was foggy with salt, but he still hunched protectively around his torso.

“Sorry…” Jester swam towards him, water dripping down her horns and hair in her eyes. “I thought that was going to be funnier than it was…”

She was close, close enough that he could see the ridges of keratin that made up her horns. Her hair was frizzy in the steam, and he was reminded of his own hair before his master sat him in front of a mirror and had unseen servants trim and lather it with that sharp smelling liquid. This woman could drag memories from every corner of his mind. 

_She’s being genuine._ And like a good spell cast, or a hard equation solved, suddenly he realized something about her: she’s _lonely_. The details added up one by one: vandalism during a major festival, protecting Veth Brenatto to the point of possessiveness, throwing herself into suicidal situations with a mage of the Assembly, the _constant_ touching. There was so much touching, lack of propriety, lack of boundaries. It was such a simple conclusion, something so domestic and common for a creature of power like her. 

_And I am just a man trying to make his dead parents proud._

“Please, don’t do it again,” Bren rubbed his temples, taking in a deep breath of steam. “You have already brought me to your strange demi-plane and seen me naked; that is a little much, is it not?”

She seemed sated with his response, and he was taken aback by her unrestrained joy. He had learned that joy was perceived in two ways: naive and imbecilic, or a flaw to be scrubbed out. He wondered how she pulled it off, the untamed power that was so unlike his spell-casting. The basket floated by Jester, letting her grab a jar; she then began to point to his hair. “Absolutely not,” Bren grabbed his geas-chain reflexively. 

“We can trade?”

Bren considered how much she already knew about him versus how much he knew about her. _To get results, one must make sacrifices_. “Fine, but you will not tool with me, understood?”

  
  


\-------------------------------------------------------

_Jester_

She had seen naked people before. Her mother’s business in the Lavish Chateau left little to imagine. Somehow this was different. Jester had been biting her tongue since he'd started to strip.

_I want that chain off of him._ She watched Caleb barely register that it was around his neck, ignoring the way the disc at the end of it clicked against his other necklace of amber. He was distant and skittish, and this made her want to know him even more. Jester coaxed him towards the steps of the pool; she had made her temple a bathhouse for creatures like him--Empire creatures and creatures burdened. The Traveler believed in balance, and her mother believed in rest and reprieve. It was the amalgamation of her two lives, her faith, her family--a whole world the Empire did not have. When she’d first seen Caleb from Brenatto’s basement she’d wanted to take him apart, really see what the land of Wildemount was made of. That was still the case, in a sense, but she had seen him over and over again in a state of duress, _need_. He’d saved Veth’s house, but seemed to take no joy from it. 

Jester sat on the upper stone step, motioning at him to sit below her so she could wash his hair without having to strain to reach his head. In the shallower water she could see he had hair on his stomach. It went from his navel down to...

He saw her looking and snorted before sitting below her; she could not help wrapping her tail around his waist in retaliation. She could feel him start to pull away; again, in rebuttal, she began to rub soap in his hair as she pulled him against her. He froze, statuesque. “I said no- no games…”

“Caleb, I'm really good at games. Woah, look I even have a secret dagger in my coat, _oooh_. Now I’m going to stab you instead of ripping the arrow out of your shoulder like a normal person.” His shoulders blushed red. “Weren’t you going to ask me questions?” She started to massage the base of his head, moving her fingers under his ears and taking immense satisfaction in the way he almost melted against her. His eyes were fluttering too, every part of him wanted to fall asleep against her. A pool of warmth in Jester's stomach accumulated as she tried not to bounce in place or give into her jitters. 

“I am…” He said. Jester adjusted her tail around him, there were goosebumps all across his shoulders now too. “This is a large facility; where are the others?”

_Fjord and Mollymauk are in Zadash with dad...and Veth is with her husband…_ “If I told you, Caleb, then you’d go and arrest them all! Next question!”

“You are alone.”

Jester cupped water in her hands, ”Uh, close your eyes, please!”

He obliged, and while Jester rinsed out the suds in his copper-colored hair she tried to find a quick rhetorical escape. He gave her little chance to explain, “Where did you get your lightning burns?”

Her mother had always been terrified of the world outside the Chateau. And she was right to be. Jester wished her mother had explained what she needed to be afraid of. The vague fears and accumulation of the outside had not prepared her for what was actually occupying the wilds, though. “Caleb, can you ask a different question?”

“A different question?” He parroted the words like he was struggling with their meaning. 

Jester rested her hands on his shoulder blades. She could build temples from thin air, and had saved this very wizard from a death by her own hand. She was even _naked_ , with her tail boldly intertwined around him. “Please,” she asked despite everything. Her stomach twisted, frustrated that she could bounce from happiness to whatever this feeling was in such a short span of conversation. 

Caleb lifted his arm out of the water and started to unravel his bandages; they stuck to his elbows with waterlogged persistence. Jester recoiled in fear that he was about to cast something on her, holding her breath in the event she’d have to fight him again. She wondered how awkward it would be to fight someone naked. 

_His books are in his coat, and my holy symbol is by my dress. I could get there before him-_

She watched green flashing currents travel up his arms, and sigils of a geometric pattern glowed across his entire body, like a maze or map carved into his skin. He turned lazily and said again, “Where did you get your electrical burns?”

Jester bit her lip, “He was an Oni.”

Caleb quirked an eyebrow at her, “That sounds...unique.”

_I wonder if he expected something else..._

_It happened months ago! Months, Jester! Fjord and Mollymauk kept working with dad! Why couldn’t you!_

Jester had left her mother a year ago after her brush with Robert Sharpe. The brush with the Oni right was before the Harvest Festival. It was old news. It wasn't supposed to frighten her. 

It had all been going according to plan anyway, she'd known the world of the Chateau could not sustain her forever; she’d gone on this great and wonderful adventure with a sailor she met leaving Nicodranus. She’d teased him, and he’d teased her back, and in the early days it had been magically similar to her mother's life before the world terrified her. Fjord was a half-orc, broad shouldered and confidant. The familiarity of him, despite having only met him when she left Nicodranus, was intoxicating. It was exactly like she was living her mother’s fairytale, but getting a second chance to do it right.

It had been Fjord and Jester against the world. They’d even had a date near a circus, stumbling upon another tiefling. Mollymauk had had purple skin and dozens of tattoos. Jester had not considered that their dynamic would change with the new friend in tow. It had then been Fjord and Mollymauk...and Jester too, against the world. Mollymauk was fun, mysterious, and arrogant in the ways Jester could appreciate. He’d technically even been the one to find her dad, lead them to a shady bar in Zaadash. She'd felt a twinge of jealousy when he'd even known the exact right thing to say to get them into her dad's underground hideout. 

After that it was Fjord, Mollymauk, and her father’s syndicate against the world. Jester’s father seemed to like her, a bit...She could tell he hadn’t made enough time to start loving her. He interacted with her using distance, pushing her away with platitudes and excuses about her safety. 

_It was one mistake. I can take care of myself! They act like I wanted to be kidnapped! Like it was my fault!_

Jester had seen her own back only sparingly. She was a master of ignoring the thin, tree branch pathways across her body as she laced up her dresses and corsets. “I’m very important, _Cayleb_.”

“Yes, you have said,” he turned around fully. “You are the only true member of your Traveler’s coalition that I have met. You are alone, though.”

“There’s- There’s Veth too!” _Why is it so hard to get people to see! To listen!_

She looked down; he had his hand gingerly cupping her tail.

“Do you want me to wash your hair?” Caleb asked. He stumbled towards the end of his sentence, though, like there was more he wanted to say. They were sitting close, enough that Jester could see little moles and freckles on his body. She considered the fun in counting them. Jester became brutally aware of her own nudity, something that had never occurred to her to worry about. 

_Yes._ “Okaaaaaaaay...”

“You don’t have to sound so hesitant.”

“Sorry, Mr.Backstabber.” _Keep making jokes. Keep making jokes. Keep making jokes!_ Jester hadn’t had her hair washed by someone since she’d been small enough to fit in her mother’s sink. 

He rubbed his face, “I’m sorry for that. It was the only way to ensure the arrowhead did not lodge into your muscle. I am not a field medic by any accounts.” 

“Well, you can make it up by washing my hair.” 

In Zadash there was a beautiful bathhouse. Jester, Mollymauk, and Fjord had spent their first day there, but when Jester had reached to wash Fjord’s hair he’d just awkwardly chuckled. 

_What was it that Mollymauk told me? ‘Sorry, sweetie, he’s lost in his own head, but he doesn’t mind it too much. It’s up to you if you want to get lost with him.’_

They switched places on the steps. Caleb’s hand slowly trailed away from her tail. “It is not unheard of, gods mingling with mortals. How did he choose you?”

“He saved my life.” She had no reason to lie or deflect. 

“I see,” his hands started slow and shaking, but then began to mechanically wash her scalp. “You caused a commotion in Zadash in his name. An entire institution of Cobalt Soul archivists believe you’re a harbinger of the occult.”

She reached behind her head to grab his wrists, and moved his hands into a rhythm. He then started to rub circles into her scalp, similarly to how she’d done for him. A giddiness made her want to _touch_ him, _have_ him. “Do you have a whole weird cork-board with drawings of me and a creepy red string?”

“That’s evidence…”

“Oh. My. _Gosh_. You do!” She punctured each word, smacking her fists against the water while laughing. He tutted at her and began to more hesitantly wash her hair. She grabbed his wrists again, insisting he put focus into the task. Marion Lavorre had admirers from every continent, who sent baskets and gifts and leisurely objects. They were always thinking of her. Who was thinking of Jester, though? “Then you’ve told all your creepy scourger buddies about me too. You talk about me all the time I bet. That’s so embarrassing, Caleb. They must think you’re obsessed with me! I mean, you are because I haven’t met any other scourgers like you.”

Jester turned to gloat, but Caleb was far away. Caleb’s face had become neutral and mute of expression. His eyes fell to the water, “then you are lucky.” He pulled himself from the pool after that, shaking off before putting his shirt hastily back on. He was agitated again, weakened still, but agitated. “Anyone else of our ranks would have dealt with you by now.”

The space he’d occupied behind her was like a wound, open and hollowed. Jester couldn’t believe him; he was so powerful and yet still childish, “you know your dick is out!”

_Why did I say that? I was kidding!_

He ignored her, putting on his pants and coat. He reached into a dimensional pocket pulling out a vial of blue liquid and parchment, sighing, “all of this with Veth Brenatto, it needs to come to light.”

The water felt cold, “No, no wait, please don’t arrest Veth! Common, we were having fun! You were enjoying this!”

He flinched, “I’m- I’m sorry, but I have my responsibilities, Jester. If you cared that much for the halflings, you should have considered that before making her your servant.”

“You care about them just like I do!” Caleb’s face was pinched, and he struggled to sit and dip his fancy pen into the vial of blue liquid. There was an overall queasiness now in his manner. Any rest or safety he’d felt a moment ago was gone. She knew he was salvageable, he had to be. If he wasn’t, then all of her intuition would be for nothing. She’d suffered enough slings and arrows to her confidence in the last year. “What about Ikithon?”

The name was like a word of power, a command of sorts. “How-”

“The Expositor, I heard her say his name that one night…” Jester bit into her tongue, considering every clue she had, “You could just tell them the part about the house floating...and _you_ saved the day. I know you wanted me to help you...We can still do that. You just have to bend the story a bit.”

Jester knew herself, did not like herself, but still knew. And she could see the traces of her reflection in the clues she’d gathered on him. “Caleb- Bren, I know you want to get back what was stolen from you, and I know you care for Ikithong- I mean Ikithon. I heard you talking about him to the Expositor-”

“You know nothing.” The paper went up in cinders in the palm of Caleb’s hand. Jester was confused, had the message been sent that way? “Now we wait.” 

She had believed in him, and he’d still let her down. “You didn’t have to do that. You could have waited.”

“The Empire waits for no one.” The way he said that made Jester shiver. It was rehearsed, and a small part of her knew it had been beaten into him. _Ikithon._ That name hadn’t registered when she’d heard the Expositor throw it out. Now, having seen Caleb’s scars, his chain, and his shuddering movements, she could place the name on her own hypothetical cork board for Caleb. 

She threw one last gesture out to stop him, even though the letter was gone she could try, "Caleb, why didn't you tell the Expositor about the Brenattos?"

Before he could respond, a piece of parchment materialized in front of Caleb. He narrowed his eyes, shocked at the quick response. 

_“Weitere Anweisungen abwarten_ …” Caleb mumbled. Jester could tell there was more, but this phrase had shaken him to the core. “ _Kyrn angriff in Zadash._ There was...there was an attack in Zadash.”

\---------------------------------------------------

_Veth_

They picked up the plates, the broken glass, and their linens. It wasn’t as somber as she’d expected. Her husband was acting like it was their honeymoon night: kissing her unexpectedly and alternating between laughing and pseudo-crying. Veth wrestled what would come next: the bitter and wild truth. 

“Yeza?” Veth would start to say. 

“And the look on his _face_ , Vethy! My wife is a bona-fide badass! A real, certified, dynamic woman!”

“Yeza!” Veth yelled. Yeza was dragging in the fragments of her favorite chair when he stopped. “Yeza, do you remember how I escaped from the woods?”

“The- The woman?”

Veth had made a big scene, walking into town with twigs in her hair and gashes in her dress. Any physical injuries had been cured by Jester, miraculous tiny scars were the only indication there had ever been a problem. It had scared the town, rumors moved at a quick pace, and Veth had begun to turn invisible. “Yeah, her...Remember how I’ve never told you what she looks like?”

“Ahuh? I thought she was just, you know, a human...a metaphor.”

Veth came out of the woods alive, already that had been a miracle. And she had wanted to be married; that had been another fragile miracle. “A metaphor?”

“Yeah, like you two killing the goblins was your way of coping with the past. Metaphorically.”

_How can someone so smart be so dumb sometimes?_

“Do you remember the woman Ermendrud showed us?” Veth said, and Yeza nodded waiting for her to continue. “I’m more tangled up in your Assembly stuff than you can imagine.” She told him everything in a whirlwind. The story of Jester saving her, and the woods, and the pranks, and the Traveler; all of it was said in a hasty and jumbled manner that fit the atmosphere of their ruined house. Her husband nodded along the entire time. At the end of it, he lowered himself to the floor, contemplating with his chin held in his hands. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

_Because all I ever wanted was to be married, but then all I ever wanted was to be seen. I wanted to be powerful, have a say in what happens in my life._ “I guess the same reason you didn’t tell me about the Assembly until we were chin deep in a goblin camp about to be their lunch.”

“Fair,” he scratched his beard, only recently having been able to grow out his sideburns and facial hair. Veth sat beside him, realizing that she was a little taller than him. That was new. “Veth, do you still-”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t even ask you yet-”

“Yeza, I’m plagued by unsaid business and wizards; but if you’re asking if I’m still here with you, the answer is always yes. Always yes.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. 

Yeza reached for her hand, “I always knew you were special. You just moved through life differently than I did.”

Veth shook her head. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say that…”

Yeza and her sat in silence, listening to summer cicada’s by the window, watching the house get darker as the sun set. “Do you think Derogna will know?” Yeza asked.

“Uh, maybe not?” A persistent knock at their door had the couple whipping their heads in unison to see who could be bothering them now. “I’ll get it, stay here.”

“ _Don’t say the creature’s name lest you summon it. Really now, you should know better.”_

The Traveler was right. In the doorway, dressed in her signature green and black, Vess Derogna stood. She was lithe, regal, and unsurprisingly assured. Her ringed fingers clicked together, “Hello, Veth Brenatto.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short Veth chapter this time. Like Caleb, we will start with her POV next chapter and have a longer perspective to make up for the shorter one.


	12. Dream Sequences and Foreign Magic

_Jester_

Very little was written on the note. The looping lines were curt and unfeeling, but they’d sent Caleb into a mumbling mess. He wanted to leave immediately, but Jester wouldn’t let him. He was out of magic and still a bit manic from reversing the spell that had been on the Brenatto’s house. It felt out of place of her to be holding someone back from a fight. 

_Mollymauk, Fjord, and Dad...I could go and show them this wizard I found...Except he’s all sad and weak. I want to fight, I do, but not now. I have the temple to cast, and actual responsibilities to Veth…_

This wasn’t like running from Nicodranus or Zadash. 

“Who attacked Zadash?” She needed details. Jester didn’t want to cast Sending and have her dad push her away with his blasé mood and tight fisted control. One second Caleb and her had been mellowed and comfortable, with a camaraderie going even. That moment in the baths, with Jester's tail wrapped around him, was gone. “Caleb, Caleb, _Cayleb_ , just sit down for a second, okay?”

She’d thrown a bathrobe on to try and read the letter, but it was in jumbled Zemnian code. Jester grumbled at the parchment, aware that Caleb wasn’t grabbing it back from her because he was assured she couldn’t read it. Caleb had begun to pace the length of the temple. Her question made him snap back to where he was. “Who do you _think_ attacked Zadash?” He asked her sarcastically. He limped to the doors and threw them open, cursing and swearing into the night. 

_Are all wizards this weird?_   
  


“ _Yes,_ ” The Traveler whispered, and for the first time since she was little, Jester jumped a bit out of shock, not expecting him there. The Traveler’s magic was all throughout the temple, but he had faded to a whisper in her mind when she’d sent him with Veth. “ _This one is collared. He’s scratching at his muzzle too much. It’s twisted against his maw, pinching him and having him foam at the mouth.”_

“The chain on his neck?”

“ _A geas: a powerful enchantment that binds a creature to service. Rebellion can be quickly squashed with a geas in place.”_

Jester shuddered. Captivity was _disgusting_ to her, violating to the very core. “Caleb come back,” Jester ran out after him. He hadn’t gotten far, and was leaned against a tree on the edge of the clearing. She pulled the rope around her robe tight. Grass and mud slipped between her newly clean feet. 

“And yet I’m here...I’m here…” Caleb was saying in Common, panting and wheezing against the tree. He looked up to see her there and blinked back angry tears in frustration. “Why should I be here in a warm bath-- _secure_ \--while my friends go out of their way to protect our home? ”

Jester wasn’t sure. “Why can’t you do both?”

“Sacrifice demands one or the other.” He sounded weighed down. That baths had worked, if only for a bit, and Jester missed that version of him. 

Jester shifted from foot to foot. _I hate when you see me, but here I am speaking softly and holding you back from doing something stupid._ “Tomorrow morning, after I cast the temple...We can go to Zadash, with Veth too, and we can get them. Let’s sleep on it and we’ll know what to do in the morning!” 

Jester had no idea who ‘them’ or ‘they’ were. The attackers, the people in opposition, someone else. 

“I- I used to say that to my friend...That we should sleep on things.” 

“Well, we should do that. I’m tired, you’re tired, and I have some blankets and bedrolls for guests...They’ve never been used so they’re really clean.”

“ _We_?” He was challenging her now. She shook her head at him, saying yes, confirming that she liked whatever this was. Jester could not call him her disciple, friend, enemy, or rival. He was present though, and they knew each other. He was giving her his skeptical look. “You looked frightened when I said it was Zadash. That was where you decorated the Platinum Dragon; is there someone there you know?” 

Jester leaned against the tree beside him, “it’s unfair that you didn’t share the letter with me and snitched, but then asked me about all my shitty baggage.”

“I- I guess it is. If it’s any consolation, I did not mention you in that report...I lied. I lied again, Jester.” He admitted, rubbing his face and fidgeting with his hands like he couldn’t believe they were his. “This has been a hard day.”

Jester stared at his chest, wondering if she could grab the chain. How much would it hurt to rip it off all in one go? "I hoped so; you wrote it fast."

They then stood in silence. She was waiting for him to come inside. A piece of her realized that he would be technically the only other person to stay the night in her new home. Veth had always left before the sun started to set. 

Jester looked up at the moons, “you know, I always felt bad for Ruidus. Her flashy sister is always stealing the show.”

“The moon?” Caleb looked up too. There were two moons circling their planet: Cartha was yellow, and sometimes silvery depending on the season; and then there was the small, dull brown of Ruidus alongside her. “The little sister feeling practically invisible…” Caleb sighed. “I’m acting insane, aren’t I?”

“Yep.” She was happy he said it and not her. 

“The Kryn only did damage to official Assembly buildings...and they apparently did not take what they were looking for.” Caleb bashfully looked to Jester to lead him back inside. “I’m sorry I was very dramatic...I’m just worried about my friends.”

Jester let him lean on her again. This was becoming a habit of theirs. “You feel out of the loop?”

He waited until they were on the doorstep to respond, “ _Ja,_ they won’t even tell me what was almost stolen.” 

If Caleb had a chain around his neck, and scars across his body, and fear in his eyes at the mention of Ikithon’s name, then of course his people wouldn’t tell him about what was stolen. Felderwin was boring, and Caleb was strange; and suddenly it all made sense to Jester. The narrative she saw was painfully miserable. He was here as a punishment. He’d hoped she was the Angel of Iron’s Cultists not only to get back a vague and stolen purpose or goal, but to prove to whoever held the chains that he was worthy. 

_I’m sorry..._

Jester and Caleb returned to the temple. Jester was trying to keep the knowledge and realization under wraps. She pulled out an extra bedroll for him, playing her movements casually. “I like sleeping in the alcove the best, I’ve been trying to paint stars up there so it feels like I’m camping. I had to sleep outside and in caves a lot when I first left home. Camping is fun, but the bugs really suck, and so does the ground if you put your bedroll on a tree branch on accident-”

"Thank you,” he took the bedroll from her and began to place it up against the wall. He stopped and turned to her one last time. “They want me to wait for further instructions. We will- I will-”

“--Figure it out in the morning!” 

He opened his mouth to debate with her, but stopped at the last second. His back was pressed against the wall; Jester figured this was another strategy of his to maintain his safety, fewer places for someone to attack. Jester did the same. Caleb had passed out the second his form hit the floor. 

The Traveler had one last message for her, before her eyelids grew too heavy: “ _The world will be different in the morning, Jester.”_

_How different?_

She dreamed of dark swamps, hidden barrooms of criminals, bathhouses by the sea. And in the deepest part of her dreams she saw a wizard with nothing but a towel on, kicking his legs in the waters of a steaming pool. He looked content. 

_\-----------------------------------------------------_

_Bren_

He dreamed, as expected, except as it was happening he realized it was magic. Not his, but the foreign one that had been in the pot, the starry liquid of anti-gravity. Only Divination wizards discussed their dreams, and his master considered them quacks. Bren had no experience here, like a foolish boy stumbling into the wrong classes at Soltryce. 

Bren floated, hesitant and cautious even in his head. He could not trust himself here against the blue and black expanse of sea and twinkling lights. It was that they were so beautiful, and he was tainted. Why was this magic here? It was not his, and he felt unworthy of it. Among the millions of welcoming, and strangely familiar, stars Bren felt every self conscious bit of him: his disastrous fling with Astrid, all tangled limbs and desperation; the hesitation in letting Trent Ikithon take the new students, the heavy fold of the Volstrucker Agents; the eye-rolls Bren kept under control while Eudowolf prayed to his goddess, the Matron of Ravens and her statues in the graveyard; the protectiveness over Veth, the bright and angry woman trapped and clawing at her prison. And then there was Lavorre, wisened, powerful, and very lonely. 

The bright spots saw everything. Bren was the most ashamed of his thoughts of Jester, he curled around them protectively. They gently teased him, enough that he slipped. Thoughts and scenes played across his eyelids. She had let him rest against her. He had almost started crying when she'd began to lather his hair. 

_You feel safe around her?_

_Yes, I have not felt safe in a long time. It is overwhelming._

_Have you ever?_

_Ever what?_

_Felt safe._

_I don’t know. We fought, once, but she pulled me back from death. She brought me back, a detriment to her situation. A mercy given with nothing expected in return._

_Strange._

There was a mote of possibility before him, a tiny vessel of what could be. He was amazed at the potential. There was so much of it; in Jester, in Veth Brenatto, in him. Bren swam past memories of his home. Blumenthal was small, but valuable to the Crown. He saw the sentry towers, armed Crownsguards from the capital unhappy to be stationed in a backwater village. 

He saw himself, twelve years old asking his father why he had stopped being a soldier. His father had left the elevated position and prestige of the watchtower to live among the rest.

_“The possibilities of life with your mother was far more exciting.”_

The magic liked this memory. It sifted looking for more. Oddly enough, Bren welcomed it. The familiarity confused him, though; where had this old friend come from? It was now contemplating his parent’s letting the Academy take him. 

_No, I was chosen, not taken. It was an honor._ Only nobility could enter the Soltryce Academy, mostly. Sometimes, a rarity would occur and they find diamonds in the rough. The recruiters sought out the glimmers. He and two other children had been chosen--Astrid and Eudowolf. They shared a cart with the vegetables and grain tithe to get to Rexxentrum and begin their new lives. 

_You were harvested._ The magic had no voice, but it sounded like Jester to him...He had no idea she could sound so wounded. There was no sound, but there was the knowledge of a tone. 

_Please, don’t say that…._

_What is this then, if not a harvest?_ The magic shifted and now he was watching himself strapped to a chair, the leather straps and metal buckles chafing his skin. Trent had come to rescue him; Bren was meant for a great destiny. Trent placed a piece of leather in Bren’s mouth, and laid a gentle hand atop his head. A few attendants entered the room with instruments and scalpels. 

Trent began to pet Bren’s head. His master always treated him well. 

_Please, I don’t want to see this. Show me Jester. Show me Veth. If you can, show me my friends back home._

He hadn’t expected his request to work. The stars twitched, and before him was a multitude of Veth’s just like he had asked for: she was holding a baby in one, a crossbow and sword in another, but the last worried him. 

She was wearing Soltryce robes, scratching her bandaged arms, and looking out a barred window. Someone had cut her hair too, and she seemed even smaller than usual. Bren couldn’t keep himself from calling to her, _“Veth!”_

Veth turned, not to address him, but to the Bren in her sphere of possibility. “Yes, Master Ermendrud?”

Bren’s throat tightened; he watched the scene carry out from the safety of the shadows in between each mote, but still he felt too close to this reality. It wasn't right. 

The false version of him got on one knee to address her. The other version then began to smooth out the wrinkles on Veth’s uniform, all the while tightly smiling. “You’re not supposed to scratch. I have some salve for you that should numb the-”

“I hate you.” Veth delivered it with a level of impassion that only came from being wrung dry, giving up, numbness. The version of him now and the version of him there responded in time with a flinch. 

“It won’t hurt for long; this will pass like a bad dream.”

Veth, drained, not even looking at the version of Bren with her said, “Master Ermendrud, this is a nightmare.”

_What have you done to me? What is this magic?_

He had studied each school of the arcane, leaning towards Evocation and Transmutation as his specialities. Astrid had shifted into war dynamics and technologies, and Eudowolf had expanded his study into the divine. Even their magic was not like this. He at least understood how they cast and channeled. He understood where it was coming from at the source. This was a whole new beacon of power. 

Was this a vision of the future? It felt like that. Yet, if this was Divination he would know. 

_What are you? You feel so familiar, but so foreign._ That guiding voice and hand had left him. He tried asking another question. _Is Veth okay?_

The magic groaned, but not verbally. It seemed their time was running out. It extended its reach to him, asking for his hand and for assistance. 

It was a distant request. It was weak, pathetically pulsating. 

_Of course._ Making that promise felt easy to Bren. He was shocked with himself. _But how?_

He blinked awake, his own magic had returned. Bren looked around at the marble floor, painted alcove walls, and then at Jester curled in a tight ball with the dozens of pillows and extra blankets surrounding her like a fort. Last night came back to him. The past few days had felt dreamlike as well. A little drool pooled against Jester's cheek. 

Bren found himself smiling. 

“ _I know that look.”_ A sly masculine voice said in his ear, catching Bren staring at Jester while she slept. Bren covered his mouth, holding back a yell that would wake Jester. There was no body or apparition. It was a solid voice, unlike the figments and fractured discussion in his dreams. It had to be real, then. This was a creature, another person perhaps invisible. “ _Good, let’s just talk amigo to amigo. No need to wake her.”_

Bren made a guess at who this was, or really what this was, “The Traveler? ”

“ _Thank goodness you’re decently sharp. I would hate if you started screaming and asking me all sorts of asinine questions._ ”

The Raven Queen did not spare Eudowolf, a chosen Paladin, this many words when they talked. The gods resided behind the Divine Gate, keeping to themselves and their kin so not to destroy the world with their power. No one, especially not Bren, who was sure the gods had turned away from him years ago, was worth this many words. 

_It’s like he’s actually here. He’s speaking to me like I’m not a rat in a maze._

_“_ Um, _Hallo_ \- Hello, guy…” 

“ _Not very eloquent, that’s a shame._ ” Bren gasped, firm hands pressed against his temples. He now saw the voice’s owner. They had long, pointed elven ears, but exaggerated to the point of being like a jackrabbit’s. The ears poked out the sides of a wild lion’s mane of red, curled hair that went far past the crouched figure's torso. They had a man’s face, but a wicked grin that pulled too wide, and bright green eyes that glowed. “ _Hold still, I would hate to scramble your already fractured mind.”_

Bren swallowed, deciding to make another educated guess about the Traveler; Bren spoke in Sylvan to them, “Lord of the Feywilds, what do I have this pleasure of a visit?” Bren held his composure as the creature pulled his eye-lids wide, looking into them and examining him like a specimen. Bren had become accustomed to invasive searches of his body, but never by a creature like this. Bren considered all that he knew of the fey-folk. They were capricious, vindictive, playful, dangerous, curious, and sometimes kind and gentle for no reason at all. It wasn’t too far off from how Jester had behaved. Bren found this somewhat a comfort as the lord, who even crouched in front of Bren, was impossibly tall. He wondered what the fey would be like standing his full height.

“ _Darling, no one likes a bootlicker. While I do love the recognition, I’ve been watching too much of your crazy-making to take you seriously. The way you make heart-eyes at my prodigy does nothing for your reputation, either. It’s actually acutely mundane and pathetic.”_ The Traveler pulled at Bren’s lips, now examining his teeth. Jester was only six feet away, and entirely asleep still. “ _The news is bad, book-boy.”_ Bren held his tongue, confused. The Traveler pulled away, leaned his face in his hand and waved the other dramatically as he explained. “ _You’re an ugly beast of a human, and there is not much to be done about it.”_

Bren almost said: ‘It could be worse’. He bit into his bottom lip, remembering that the fey needed no excuse to make life hellish if invited to do so. The fey loved word games, and Bren was always trying to plan out his words. He was now seeing more and more of why Jester could speak without hesitation, freely and wastefully like this creature. 

" _Though you are soaked in both my magical waters, and the unknown goop from the halflings_. _You may have to deal with that before you work on your hideous, knock off color of my hair._ ” 

Bren touched his hair subconsciously, the creature’s hair was lighter than his, but not too dissimilar. He was mostly amazed at the level of humanization the creature had reached. They spoke to him airily and aloofly, but Bren could at least follow the words. Bren tried Sylvan again, “I ask again what the pleasure of this visit is, far-traveler.”

_Not a god of the pantheon, but close enough. Keep your tongue under control or you’ll end up spitting snakes and toads._

“ _I need to know if you’re a good replacement.”_

“For what?” Bren’s curiosity reared its head at the worst times. Once again, the realization of where he was hit him. A powerful woman and a fey who was loyal to her had brought him to a demi-plane in the woods. And he’d gone along with it because? He was pathetic?

Or worse...that feeling. That useless feeling when she pushed his anti-divination amulet back under his shirt, ran her hands through his hair, carried him, told him she would fight alongside him in Zadash without knowing the first thing about the decades long conflict between the Kyrn Dynasty and the Empire. 

The Traveler peered at him with a wide smile and narrowed eyes, “ _I’m very excited to see who I get to meet through you. Do find that halfling fast; Jester knows great brutality when she’s been wronged. If you lose little Veth, I'm sure you'll be a sufficient replacement. I would just hate to see that, though.”_

The Traveler vanished as Jester rolled over awake and rubbing her eyes. Jester smiled at Bren and stretched her arms back with a yawn. “You stayed, Caleb!” Jester seemed surprised, a bit of unrestrained delight seeping in. He must have been making a face because she cocked her head at him, “you okay?”

“I don’t know anymore, _Sheda._ ” 

\-----------------------------------------------------------

_Veth_

_This is a dream. This can’t be real, not after everything that has happened today._

“Your home, I’m so sorry. It was quaint. Very quaint.” Derogna levitated Veth out of the doorway, entering to stand over Yeza and deliver her emotionless apologies. Her husband scrambled to get to his feet and Veth growled as her body spun in the air. This was getting old. “Nevertheless, gather your things Mr.Brenatto.”

“Excuse me?” Yeza squeaked.

“We can discuss payment and negotiation of your salary further in the capital, come along.” Derogna moved her hand in the air to create an incantation, it was jaunty and talon-like; she dropped concentration on Veth, sending the woman earthbound for the fifth time that day. 

“Archmage, Lady Derogna,” Yeza clasped his hands respectfully and gave the wizard a pleading look. “Did Lord Ermendrud already explain the situation?”

“In a way,” The half-elf mage stabilized the glowing rune in the air and held out her hand. “As I said, we can discuss these matters with the Martinet in Rexxentrum.”

Veth stood up, “No, we already said we were staying. Bren Ermendrud can vouch for us.” 

_If he was here..._

Derogna slowly turned, like she’d forgotten Veth was there. The woman put on an invasive stare, a scowl of sorts. Veth dug her finger-nails into her palms.

Derogna leered down at Veth, waiting for something; Veth could guess this woman had been told ‘no’ a number of times countable on ten fingers. The mage looked back to Yeza. “Is this true?” Derogna asked. Yeza nodded, visibly swallowing discomfort. “Then incentives will have to be enacted to convince you of Rexxentrum’s safety.” The mage snatched Veth’s wrist, sharp manicured nails dug into Veth’s flesh as she cried out in shock. 

Yeza started panicking, “You promised me you wouldn’t-”

The halfling pair shared one look before the world melted away and was replaced with a new one for Veth. Derogna let go of her hand and Veth fell to the ground. Her hands hit ornate bricks instead of the hardwood floor in her house.

"Yeza!" Veth screamed. She looked up to see eight towers, monolith-like structures rising higher and higher into the night sky. Veth had to crane her neck, swallowing to keep the dizziness from making her puke. Veth looked around: it was night, but the world around them was filled with street lanterns, Derogna had taken her-- _teleported_ her-- to a pagoda of sorts without a roof. Around them was a garden, not with vegetables or food, but flowers trimmed in matching colored rows. The sounds of activity, people, movement even shocked Veth. Everyone in Felderwin would have been inside their homes by now, having quiet dinners and keeping off the roads. 

“Is that...Is that a rose bush?” It was the first coherent thought Veth could put to words. Derogna raised an eyebrow at her before pulling a wand from her sleeve. Veth scrambled backwards, reading the intent of Derogna to cast another spell on her. “Caleb, he’ll be pissed when-” Her back hit the railing of the pogoda. She’d been kidnapped to Rexxentrum, a threat that Veth had thought was only hot air. Caleb’s charms had worked on Yeza _and_ her. Enough time had passed that they’d believed they were secure with these people, or that at least they had one on their side enough to protect them. “Ermendrud won’t let you do this!”

“Let me?” Derogna’s tone shifted to amused. The wand flashed, and a sharp piercing sensation washed over Veth. She screamed before a numbing blanket came over her mind. It was now like being drunk, or maybe like when you get a splinter out of your foot. “Little girl, were you that easily wooed by Trent’s pet? Come along, the Martinet will want to know of your husband’s little tantrum, and he’ll decide where you will be kept.”

Any bravery Veth had at the start of the day was robbed from her with the truth that was further confirmed from Derogna: Caleb Widogast, or Bren Ermendrud, was fallible. More importantly he was an extension of these mages’ wills--not his own. 

Derogna motioned for Veth to follow. Veth’s legs complied, compelled by the magic that had been cast. They traveled down a well lit street, but Veth’s eyes would not turn to take in the new sites or the magnitude of wonder before her. Everything was enveloped in the haze of following Derogna’s orders. 

A few robed individuals, wearing the red and gold that Caleb had worn on his first day in Felderwin, bowed as Derogna passed by. They took no notice of Veth, who was screaming against the walls of her head. Anytime Veth’s mind wandered, Derogna’s magic would rear her in. 

_What if this lasts forever?_ She would be trapped, trapped in a body she didn’t even really like and that wasn’t even good at anything. She would be Veth ‘not even the owner of her own body’ Brenatto. 

The eight towers grew closer, and then close enough that they were at the base of one of them. In the haze Veth realized that each tower had its own style. The contrast was so sharp that it was almost unsettling, like eight different architects had the worst breakup of the century. The tower they arrived at was on a sprawling lawn. The grass was verdant green that matched the color of the stone tower. The tower door was six feet taller than Derogna, and had a bronze knocker, shaped like an eagle’s head holding the circular bit in its mouth. 

“Come along,” Derogna commanded. Veth remembered how the stories her brother used to tell ended: girls kidnapped by goblins and wizards died for their curiosity or their impertinence. Veth had survived goblins; but into the mouth of the tower there was less certainty. There was no time to take in the magnitude of the staircase or the rooms, or the fact that the building seemed to have no roof or ceiling. The invasive magic brought Veth to a room that would have made her begin to shake, if not for the mental chains attached to her psyche. 

A painting of a ruined, greyed landscape with gnarled trees stood over a grand fireplace. Yet, this was not the most prominent object in the room. There were marble statues of beasts: winged, taloned, multi-eyed. They were all in agony, making the room feel like a hunter’s den. 

Most notable though, was the man standing by the fire and staring at the painting. He had large pointed ears that were grander than even Derogna’s; his hair was long enough to go past his shoulders, white and pure. His robes were elegant and grey. He turned, wearily, to greet Derogna. “This night has been a disaster-” He abruptly stopped when he noticed Veth behind Derogna. “The halfling?”

“The halfling’s wife,” Derogna explained. “Collateral, I assume by the morning Trent’s boy will bring the husband and station them here.” 

The elf looked over Veth, “You couldn't just swallow your pride and take the actual chemist?”

Derogna waved a hand and said to Veth, “Take a seat in the corner.” She returned her attention then to the man, “The creature is a drunk, nothing special like the husband. I doubt she’ll remember how she got here in the morning. Taking her ensures less defiance on the chemist's part.” 

_Am I not supposed to be able to hear what’s going on?_ Veth’s legs took her to sit respectfully and demurely. 

The man pinched his forehead. “An entire set of the solution was wasted, and the Beacon nearly lost in Zadash. All in a matter of one day there is panic in Zadash and Felderwin over the Kryn.” 

“I did say Oremid was not worthy to keep the Beacon under control, nor Ermendrud to watch Yeza Brenatto. Have Trent and his other thugs even returned yet?” 

“No, I’m keeping them in Zadash for another week to ensure the towers can be rebuilt and that the Cobalt Soul doesn’t try and usurp our stronghold in Zadash. The King will want a retributive assault and demand an explanation; it’s time to bring all of our assets back to Rexxentrum. I also recommend we start advanced tests with Ermendrud or the other Volstrukers. If they can handle the Ressidium fragments then they should be ready for the distilled Beacon.”

Derogna’s spell kept Veth’s body and face neutral. If not for the magic, Veth would have been asking unrestrained questions. They spoke with too much familiarity and too quickly for her, but she pieced together what was important: They were doing tests, specifically tests on people. Caleb was one of those people, and the distillments that Yeza had been working on would be used on Caleb and others. 

_I'm afraid for him..._

Derogna now seemed uncomfortable, “You truly believe accelerating this won’t draw suspicion from the Crown? Ludinus-”

The elf, Ludinus, simmered with untapped power, “You forget yourself, _Vess_.”

The two could have been circling each other. Their fanciful words hid the truth, but barely; they were powerful monsters. The statues of terrified beasts in the room reflected this. Veth was sure the two were about to begin lobbing spells of violence. 

Social convention won out, though. And the moment fizzled into stalemate. The man flexed his hands, agitation looked unflattering on his unwrinkled face, “Trent of course will be delighted to have Ermendrud return.” The two seemed to hate ‘Trent’ more than each other. Veth realized that Ludinus had brought him up for the sole purpose of directing his ire and Derogna’s towards a common dislike, perhaps a common enemy. 

Derogna wrinkled her nose, “And if the boy goes mad again, like last time?”

“Then we’ll return him to Vergesson Sanatorium and start again.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this three days late? Yeah, but it's a bit longer than usual. Once again, thank you to everyone who has stayed with me. Comments are seriously how I gauge story interest and story attention. You all have been so supportive.


	13. Interrupted Messages

_Jester_

She had heard the conversation between the Traveler and Caleb. Years of pretending to be asleep while her mother had clients could be used even against her god. It was _technically_ the Traveler who had taught her how to fake sleep well, explaining that mortals who committed the natural process had a very special way of going about breathing and moving. ‘You watch people sleep?’ She had asked him, teasing really. The Traveler had flicked her nose and responded, ‘And you _don’t_ in your crawl spaces?’

Jester had kept her eyes closed the entire conversation, trying to find a good moment to jump up and interject in Caleb’s interrogation. Most of it was not a surprise; Caleb speaking Sylvan was nice, and the Traveler watching out for her of course. The Traveler had given Veth similar trials and hoops to jump through when they’d first met. It was the other roguish comments from her mentor that made Jester give pause, the bit about the ‘heart-eyes’, and then the other bit about ‘replacements’. It could have been just a gag, the Traveler had teased her for lusting after Fjord, and even Mollymauk that one time. 

It was a joke. Just a silly little joke to scare Caleb. That was all it was. 

“Your clothes are wrinkled,” Jester commented as Caleb rubbed his knee. He massaged and began to stretch his leg slowly. He was eyeing her again, doing his usual careful assessment of her words. She’d never known a person to hold each word, observe it and turn it over before responding. Jester could envision the lines that made him, the tendons and the litheness of his form in the water in contrast to her fat and round body. She’d liked how she could hold him against her, slotted against her chest in the warm water. Jester would like even more to see how they’d work together to catch the villains following the Angel of Irons.

She shied away from the thoughts of what the Traveler implied, wrapping and leaning into the sensation that Caleb had stayed, had even given himself to her for tending. She still wanted, always and always, instastabile and demanding, but right now Caleb was here and she could enjoy that. “Is that an old injury?” Jester asked to distract herself. 

“You’re very chipper for having just woken up…” Caleb said, Jester twirled her tail nervously. He stood and then looked around the corner of the alcove, his hands were jittering too. 

“I promise; he’s not as scary as you think.” 

“You were awake?” Caleb guessed immediately, and Jester felt goosebumps. He knew so easily. Yesterday she had told him where her scars came from--something unsaid to even Veth, her mama, or the friends she’d left with her father. It was between her, the Traveler, and now Caleb. 

On a rainy day the Traveler had taught her the secret of keeping her name powerful. He’d explained that where he’d come from they traded mortals’ names like currency and that while Jester was the name she’d chosen for herself, and that was her true name, it could be hidden and encircled by other titles, layers. 

Telling Caleb about the oni had felt like shedding one of the layers between him and her name. 

“A little bit, maybe,” Jester admitted. She had done a decent job waking up on cue, hearing Caleb get quieter and quieter as the Traveler toyed with him. She could understand the worry that sometimes graced people’s reactions to a force so other-wordly. She trusted the Traveler’s judgement, and because of that, she felt frazzled knowing that he thought Caleb _liked_ her. She’d not been ever truly liked. Jester had felt _tolerated_ by most people. Even Veth sometimes would snap at her, and the old worries from childhood would twitch in Jester. 

The Traveler had said to Jester that the day would be different, but how different was still the question. “He didn’t put a hex on you or anything, right? He likes to do that; it’s not personal, but he does like to do it.”

“ _Nothing is ever personal with the Fey, until it is_.” Caleb spoke Sylvan at her, raising an eyebrow and testing her response. 

Jester responded in turn with perfect Sylvan, “ _Because with tricks you should do war.”_

Caleb tilted his head to the side, returning to speaking Common, “That phrase has never sounded as good in Common as it does in Sylvan.”

“It really doesn’t.” Jester stood, approaching to fill the space next to him. He looked her up and down; he was confused, but his attention was taken and occupied. “Oh, common, I’ve seen you naked. We’re there, Caleb. You don’t have to duck away from me anymore!”

“Indeed.” He swallowed, unable to keep her eye. It would take one shove to have him against the wall of the alcove. She wondered if he’d let her do it. 

_See, Traveler? He is skittish and he is strange. That is all._ “So, what’s the Traveler replacing? We’ve never been big into human sacrifice, but exceptions can be made if the wizard is evil and a know-it-all.” 

“I would have hoped you could decipher your own patron.” He did not blanch or cower from her joke about sacrifice; his magic and security must have returned to him, or he was catching onto her humor. Jester had to tilt her head back to her neck to look at Caleb, she was persistent and soaking up the lack of space. 

“My _god_ ,” Jester corrected. “And we can ask him; he’s not like the others. There's none of that weird distance between us.” Jester had talked to the priests in the Platinum Dragon’s Temple. Bahamut sent his followers messages in the air and wind, unfeeling and beyond real connection. “Traveler, come out now! That was a good trick to play on Caleb!” The temple lacked even the sounds that a house naturally made. She looked to Caleb who was still waiting for the promised deity. The Traveler had been here a moment ago! She adored him, but did not appreciate this trick of his. He only seemed to do it when Jester was proving a point to others. When they were alone the Traveler was more than willing to appear at any moment. “Sometimes even he’s shy; a little bit like you. Hey, Traveler! Caleb and I want to know what’s up with-”

“I believe you.” Caleb said gently. 

Caleb hadn't responded like Fjord had, or her mama, but there was still a faint edge of pity. They were all secretly asking her to speak a little more quietly, or less about her friend, or more about anything else. It was like they were comforting a child or a mad man. “No, no, I know you don’t…” She trailed off, embarrassed and with her face heating up. There was no need to make him believe in the Traveler, even to get him to like the Traveler was unnecessary in their limited alliance. Last night she’d told him that in the morning they could move forward. The morning was here, and suddenly Jester wasn’t so sure. 

_Stop feeling weird! Stop feeling weird!_

Caleb cleared his throat, looking now apologetic. “If you are trying to make me believe in him, there is no need. His presence was very much...present; more interaction than I’ve ever even had with my acquaintance’s goddess…”

“Well, you know I don’t _need_ you to believe in him!” _Her dad had laughed when she’d told him she was a cleric._

“Of course; I am not his cleric.”

_What an ass._ She'd wanted him to argue back. Jester turned away from him, “Guess I’ll have to contact Veth, since you’re just standing here being made a fool of by me and the Traveler! And after I said I would help you even after you almost snitched on us!” Jester waved her hand to summon the connection, imagining the bits that made up Veth that would allow her magic to find her and link their words: “Good morning, Veth the Brave, this smelly loser is still in my temple and he’s ruining the atmosphere with his ugly chin and his annoying-” The spell cut at twenty five words and the connection transitioned to Veth. “Shit!”

“Twenty Five words,” Caleb corrected.

“I know! Shut up! It’s my spell!” 

“ _Bitte verzeih mir…_ ”

The magic had connected her to Veth, but there was a weighty silence that followed. Heavy breathing followed by a daunting plea whispered, so gently and quietly Jester could have sworn Veth was at her shoulder: _“Don’t bring Caleb to Rexxentrum…_ ”

\----------------------------------------------------

_Bren_

Lavorre’s face had broken into a frightened grimace, and so she had grabbed a large satchel. The leather of the bag was a dainty pink. From out of the bag she’d pulled an axe with a bow around the handle, and a rusted brown smear on the blade. 

“Was Veth arrested by the city Crownsguards?” He had asked.

And then she had grabbed Bren by the wrist. This was all he needed to know it was worse than that. 

The archfey had been just as Jester was: not at all what Bren expected. There were bigger issues at hand, and they dwarfed Lavorre and her god into petty criminals and harmless nuisances. He imagined the Bren from months past--like one of the many Bren’s he’d seen in his dream and timelines--obsessively pouring over evidence and lude drawings Jester had used to advertise. He’d thought himself so clever, destined to bring down the menace he’d discovered.

The evolution of the sheda and her archfey, from the world ending tyrants of his nightmares to, well…’not that bad’ in comparison to the strange magic and Veth Brenatto’s issues within Bren’s own institutions was a shocking one. 

He had been deeply pained by this news two days prior; now he felt relieved. It was like Lavorre had washed away his fear in her bath house _._ The terror of if Lavorre had actually been malicious, combined with a Kryn attack, alongside being left out of his master’s plans and the Assembly’s goals for this new magic; it could have broken him all over again. 

“Derogna is like _super old_. I bet if you just spooked her real good she’d have a heart attack. But you won’t have to; Veth bites sometimes...Oh balls, I hope Veth didn’t bite Derogna. That would be so funny, but so bad-” Bren did not pull his hand away and he told himself Lavorre’s grip was too strong to fight. 

_Of course Vess is involved. What are you hiding, Jester? What else are you not telling me?_

Bren turned his attention to Vess Derogna to keep his rolling stomach in check as Lavorre began to take him through the trees, away from the safety of her temple. 

He’d met Derogna shortly after Trent had taken him in. She’d always had a taste for fine things: rings, new cloaks, hairpins. There was no whimsy to this accessorizing though, only sharp wealth, a feature of most of the Assembly members and also advisors to the King. His master’s fellow Assembly members had taken interest in Bren’s presence like one would take interest in a rare animal, or a new strange painting. They had thought his master was only filling in another of the Volstrucker ranks, connecting later on that Bren had ambitions his master recognized could be extraordinary. Before Bren had snapped, he'd been approached by Derogna in one of the many attempts made to understand Trent Ikithon or get a hint of information for blackmail. The Cobalt Soul did it, and so did the Assembly. They all did it. If any single figure member went after another, they'd be crushed. Vess Derogna no longer taught in the Soltryce academy, but her books were still in the library, minor artifacts she had discovered were on display, and portraits of her decorated the halls of the academy. 

His master did not trust her mysterious expeditions into Xhorhaus or Eiselcross, nor did he particularly like her personality. But that was not unusual. Bren had always enjoyed the times where his master would vent to him; it was a teaching moment, letting Bren understand his future colleagues who would show him no kindnesses, and it was the greatest assurance Bren had that he and his master were friends, family perhaps. 

_It makes the procedures less frightening, knowing that he’s not hurting me on purpose or for pleasure._ Bren was grateful that Lavorre had captured his hand, it kept him from drifting off into the forest or his memories. 

Bren and Jester hurriedly moved through a clearing, an illusive pathway, and a distortion of what should have been a normal forest. He’d originally chalked up the goblin raids on Felderwin as a sign of underfunded and inadequate guards. He could feel it now in the woods, though, the secret of how the beasts evaded capture and could conduct their kidnappings. Even with his magic guarding his mind, the shifting planes reached for him. He had to force himself to think of what was at hand, but the lack of logic in the spaces between his plane of existence and the other did not want Lavorre. Her archfey had placed her amongst the trees, and when the forces above him asked where she’d come from he must have answered: ‘Oh? She’s always been here.’

_So much I don’t know. For all this power I have, there is still so much to go._

If this new magic the Assembly was experimenting with needed protection, protection that included preemptive measures against an attack from Kyrn agents, then why were the Brenatto’s being punished? 

_Because it's easy._

_No, not punished--collected. The Assembly is pulling everything back to Rexxentrum._ Bren felt his stomach clench. Why had his message to Astrid then told him to stay in Felderwin? Was he being left behind?

“Don’t let go, okay, I don’t want you getting lost in the woods. Usually the Traveler would make sure we wouldn’t get stuck, but um...Yeah!” Lavorre had no fear of touching him. It was commendable, “So, let's just say I had been taken to Rexxentrum hypothetically. What could I expect, hypothetically that is?”

“You’re talking in circles.” _And answering my questions in your own...way?_ It wasn’t stupidity. Bren would have thought that earlier in their rivalry; now he knew this was her choice of coping, maintaining power in dialogues too. It was a very admirable act, and if Lavorre didn’t employ so many theatrics he would have thought she was only doing it to keep his mind at ease. “And you are coming to Rexxentrum with me. You can see for yourself.” He’d tried leaving her once when he’d first been summoned to aid Veth. “I don’t want you destroying my city in search of your friend.”

Jester’s feet planted into the ground, forcing Bren to bump into her back. When she turned to face him her goat-pupiled eyes flashed. “You think I can destroy Rexxentrum?” 

_Await orders, Brennon._ He grappled with shame, his duplicitous reasons for accepting this entire exile. _You have always been loyal, steadfast despite the cruelty done onto, Brennon._ It was not that he was truly loyal. He just knew when to put down his plans when the world demanded he serve it. Bren could pause his wanting, but he could, and would, pick it up again. “I believe you would do a significant amount of damage; before I reached you and stopped you of course.” 

“You wouldn’t join in?” It was another baseless jab; it had no backing of any kind. It made him shiver. 

“No,” Bren answered too slowly for his own liking. 

\---------------------------------------

Yeza Brenatto looked to Bren, then to Jester, then back to Bren with dismay. At first he raised both his hands, the universal symbol of 'don't fire; I am coming willingly'. Jester was trying to do a little dance move to ease the chemist. Bren thanked Veth and the universe for whatever quick explanations had been delivered the night prior. Veth had told him the truth--a surprising amount of truth--about Jester Lavorre, but the reality of the blue horned woman and the mage that had been assigned to him at his front door almost sent the halfling catatonic. 

_I tell him about a strange tiefling woman near Felderwin...and he fails to even consider that his wife’s secret friend is that woman. He makes no connection to his wife’s outings, her jumpy-ness, the obvious suspicious activity going on around him. Completely oblivious! He is...smart and hardworking, but he is not special, do not have the glimmer, like Veth._

“Things like this just don’t happen to people like me!” Yeza Brenatto shakily explained while Bren and Jester had him ducking between houses to get to the teleportation circle Bren had waiting in his basement. The halfling was much slower than his wife, making small groans of discomfort when they coaxed him out from between hiding place to hiding place. “When the Assembly first came to me, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never even left Felderwin.”

“Well Veth loves you very very much.” Jester responded. Yeza ducked his head at this, following them to Bren’s home. 

Bren threw off the rug covering his cellar’s hatch, ushering Brenatto and Lavorre down the stairs. Bren asked Jester to keep her hands to herself as they descended into his house’s cellar. He suddenly felt self-conscious of the room; he hadn’t the time to clean it or put away his work. With others present the atmosphere of the yellow lamp, the maps, the pamphlets, and pages of testimonies suddenly seemed small and pathetic. It was his whole obsession laid bare before these two outsiders. Jester held her hands behind her back only until she saw her green cloak, and worse the locket, on the work-bench. She ran forward, ignoring his calls to her. And of course she put the locket around her neck. “You painted this?! How-”

“It’s an ambrotype and we have no time for you to riffle through my things.” Bren wondered if Jester and Veth had felt as uncomfortable when he was amidst their homes and worlds. This fluttering awkwardness would get worse when he brought Jester and Yeza to Rexxentrum and he had no way to mentally prepare himself, no time either. 

Yeza shyly tugged at Bren’s sleeve. “We’re returning to Felderwin then? I didn’t grab much before you came for me…”

Jester’s face twitched, she began to twist her hands together. Bren answered cautiously, “I will do my best to have us return in a short time.” That answer did not please Jester, her face had gone distant. “Any resources you need in the city I can provide, I promise that you will be safe.” 

Bren turned away from Jester’s disappointment towards the corner of the room. He summoned arcane chalk from his coat’s breast pocket, he rested on his knees, and began to etch runes into the floorboards. The work was a soothing balm. He heard Jester approach to sit by him. He did not snap at her to stay back, she’d been quiet and careful to sneak, the familiarity of yesterday’s gentle fingers against his chest reminded him that she was not a danger. “We aren’t coming back, are we, Caleb?”

He halted his drawing, “We will return once we have Veth.”

“I don’t need you to keep from disappointing me. Yeza, yes, but not me.” 

Bren looked over his shoulder; the halfling chemist was sitting on the bottom step, his head in his hands. Bren felt for the man, “You have not even suspected that this could be a trap for you, _sheda._ I am not worried for you and your arrogance. I have always been concerned, _ja,_ where this halfling couple would land, though. I had hoped it would be voluntarily in Rexxentrum. No, but I am not worried for you, but I am worried about what you are hiding from me too.”

Jester looked to his teleportation runes, running her hands alongside the symbols, “These are pretty. Uuuh, it’s that my temple needs someone to cast it and I’m sad cause' I’ll have to start all over again.” She was a horrible liar: inflection wrong, eyes looking too intensely into his, and the sentiment contradicted her earlier insistence that he could not disappoint her. In fact, he felt a greater loss at the bathhouse stepping away from permanence. There were no clerics in Rexxentrum with such potential or with a foresight to take the time or care to summon a temple. Bren went back to putting the runes down, his silence would let her know of his skepticism. He let her dance around the subject, fulfilling the emotional journey that he only saw the half of when she bit her lip and rolled her eyes. “Oh, you're such an ass, Caleb. Fine, Veth told me not to bring you to Rexxentrum. But I need her back, Caleb!”

His chalk snapped. Bren cursed and pulled out another. “Is that all she said?” Rexxentrum was his home; of their oddball trio he would be the safest there, respected, secure. In Felderwin he was an exile, probationary wizard, babysitter. 

“ _Yes.”_ Jester hissed at him, she looked back at Yeza who was now watching the pair of them kneeled together. Jester lowered her voice. “I didn’t want to say because- because yesterday we worked so well together, _so well;_ but I don’t know if you should go back.” Lavorre raised her hand, and brushed his chest right where the geas was. He shuddered and looked back down to the runes. A few more minutes and they’d be ready for travel. 

“I am not afraid of my own home, Jester.”

“You didn’t hear Veth; I did.” 

_Astrid grabbed his wrist. This was right before the end. “He loves you, but you’re making him do this, Bren. Don’t push his affections to their limits!”_

It had been a long time since someone had looked out for him, thought him worth protecting and not as their protector. Truthfully, it had been a long time since he’d been a protector and not an enforcer. It had been even longer since he’d had his hair washed by another, had a good spar that was physical or verbal, or faced one of the many real mysteries in the world. He’d tried hiding the memories and emotions around Jester from the foreign magic, but maybe it had never been about hiding those thoughts from others. Bren had failed to hide from himself. 

He returned his eyes to Jester’s, and without breaking contact he ignited the teleportation circle. 

\------------------------------------------------------------

_Veth_

Ludinus Da’leth and Vess Derogna said words and phrases Veth knew the meaning of, but could not understand the context of: beacon, distillments, reproducing effects, moving forward in the coming weeks, Kryn Dynasty, the conflict at this stage. 

And they talked about her husband and Caleb like assembled goods.

After a few hours, with time marked by Derogna recasting the spell on her and switching to yell at Da’leth in Elvish instead of Common, Veth was led to a room of sorts. Derogna had touched one of the petrified beast statues, and the fixed stone had cracked to life to take Veth’s compliant hand like a dance partner. The creature was her height, with large bat’s ears, needle fangs poking out of its stone lips, and if the stone was not slate colored; Veth could guess this creature’s skin might have once been green. 

Derogna had picked a statue at random, or perhaps because it was the only one of Veth’s height. Her expression remained focused on Da’leth afterwards; and as the animated statue took Veth away, Derogna did not pay them any mind. 

If it had been anyone else, Veth could have believed this was calculated maliciousness. Everyone in her village knew what happened to her. It was something worse: indifferent ignorance born out of the convenience that the statue was the same size and height as Veth. The statue led Veth down an endless, narrow hallway with wine red carpets and fir green wallpaper, doors with numbers on small gold plaques were spread equidistant apart. Like traveling through the woods to Jester’s home, there was the sensation of elongation and shrinking. Veth screamed inside her head again, imaging bashing in the statue like Jester and her had done with actual goblins. The rooms were cells, decorated to seem like hostel rooms perhaps, but still cells where people and things would be kept. The goblin-statue stopped in front of a door with seven nine’s. Veth had never seen such a number, nor could she conceptualize its size. 

Yeza worked in small points, point-five, point-three’s and such. Veth and Yeza had about ten gold pieces saved for emergencies. The idea of an escape had been there, but it was running away down that impossible hallway. The statue pushed her into the room and closed the door behind her. It was not a dungeon or jail cell exactly. It was a sterile workshop, beakers, flasks, and similar objects were at a workbench in the middle of a mildly uncarpeted room with wooden floors. To the left was a small cot, a meagerly supplied bookshelf, a doorway into a side room and a magnificent washbasin, and the trappings of a living quarters. Unlike her home though, there were no burn marks on the floor from accidental fires, no scuffs or signs that this was a well lived in apartment, and there were no windows. No natural light, only strange lanterns affixed to the ceiling that gave off a white intense glow. None of this was for Veth though, she’d been thrown in as another piece of furniture for Yeza. 

Veth went to throw herself on the cot, but her body did not obey. Without a direct order or compulsion, Derogna’s magic kept her standing still like an attentive crownsguard. 

_Of course._ Her knees began to ache, and she could swear there was an itch at her elbow. Back in her broken home there was a sword Caleb had gifted her, a sword just the perfect size for a halfling to chop a mage’s head off. 

_I bet it grows legs and crawls back to her neck anyway. Wizards…_

Veth imagined Caleb in Jester’s temple, being turned into an animal like Jester had done to a goblin once, or him chasing Jester around the room to get back his pants and his coat. He could have always been like Derogna, but he was immature and young still. As the thought sat on Veth’s chest, Derogna’s magic either faded or the mage had turned her powers to other works. Veth’s knees became concave. In the morning she’d gone to Old Lady Edith’s to deliver medicine, had her house float into the sky, had gone flying with a wizard, had told her husband the truth, and then been kidnapped. She crawled her way to the cot.

_“Do you feel different?” Veth asked Yeza while they layed in bed. She had wanted to ask him for months after the goblins. He snored back at her, oblivious. “Do you feel changed, Yeza?”_

Luckily there were no dreams, except for Jester’s voice shaking her awake. There was the ever brief second where Veth thought she’d been napping in the temple. The day prior came back to Veth, but Jester had no idea of what had happened. Veth rubbed her eyes, wanting to cry with relief when Jester said: _“Goodmorning, Veth the Brave, this smelly loser is still in my temple and he’s ruining the atmosphere with his ugly chin and his annoying-”_

A knock came at the door. “Miss Brenatto, make yourself decent.” Vess Derogna was turning the handle as she talked. 

Veth’s head whipped up from against the cot. _Aaaaaaaaaah!_

What could she say? If Caleb brought Yeza, they wouldn’t be saving her. They would all be trapped. She had one more second: _“_ Don’t bring Caleb to Rexxentrum…”

The door opened while Veth’s mouth was finishing the ‘m’ on the word. Vess Derogna’s entrance was now slow, “Who were you just speaking to?”

“My imaginary friend,” Veth had them when she was a child. Jester might as well have been one. 

The mage pursed her lips, “I see…”

“Yeah, you know, telling her all about Rexxentrum...yeah.” Derogna was no longer listening, Veth’s lie had worked or the mage hadn’t really cared. She blinked lazily and waved her hand to summon a finer chair to sit down in. It was a plush backed thing and it could have been from the room with the statues. Veth stayed sitting on the cot, trying to keep from kicking her legs back and forth, as Derogna cracked her fingers. “Sooooo…” Veth muttered. 

“I know this may seem cruel to you, even unfair, but I must ask that you at least cooperate with me going forward. Since you entered Yeza Brenatto’s life you’ve been a security risk to this entire operation.”

“Well, it’s nice to be important.”

Derogna continued ignoring her, “Your husband is attached to you.”

“I sure hope so.”

Derogna blinked slowly, uttered a few words, and from her palm a sphere of sorts shimmered. It had multiple flat sides, two golden handles attached to it, and was the color of a night sky right when the sun set. “Have you seen this object before?”

“N-No?” It reminded Veth of the distilled vials, dust and strange magic floating in her house. It was not real. What was being shown to her was only a parlor trick. Caleb had spent enough time with her and her husband, his magic so casually was part of him, that it would take more to impress Veth. 

Derogna let out a momentary sigh of frustration. Her eyes flashed green and a blue ring of light circled the room. 

_“Do you feel changed Yeza?” I do. I am different._

“Has your husband ever alluded to the existence of an object such as this?” 

Veth waited for the magic to drown her, but nothing came. “No...What did you just...what was that?” 

“Has your husband bragged or potentially told others in Felderwin about his work?”

“No, but people talk when they see your carriages come by.”

Derogna’s face morphed from its sophisticated veneer to a snarl. With her free hand she gripped the armrest of her chair. “In the last few months has anyone come to Felderwin inquiring of an object such as this?” The blue light flashed again from around the room. 

Veth still felt nothing, except maybe a bit of gloating joy in her stomach. “You mean besides the wizard your people sent?”

Derogna closed the palm with the illusion of the strange-half sphere, “When your husband arrives I’ll be sure to let him know to punish you.” 

_He’s not coming! I told Jester not to bring Caleb! No Caleb equals no Yeza. You’re stuck with me!_ “Are you going to get him to spank me? It’s been a while-”

The mage stomped out of the room. 

_“Another fantastic performance and another enemy.”_ the Traveler had his hands clasped to the lantern attached to the ceiling and was swinging back and forth. 

Veth flexed her hands. The magic hadn't affected her. “That was...weird.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes canon forces you to post a week late because it cripples your faith in writing the voices of other peoples' D&D characters. Other times canon makes you consider what right do you even have to try and make stories from the voices of other peoples' D&D characters. And then you lay awake at night considering how you can't pin Jester Lavorre down, and never will because that's the whole point of her as a character. 
> 
> And then you suck it up. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you again for your comments and kudos. Writing and practicing with these characters has helped me continually keep pace, explore myself as a writer, and begin to consider making my own stories in the future. The feedback I get is always wonderful to see.


	14. Strangers in a Strange Land

  
  


_Jester_

There would be no temple tonight, and Jester would have to begin the year-long process anew. She had to make this decision with only the aid of the memory of Veth’s face and loyalty to her husband. It had been Veth running back to Yeza, to danger, away from the easy safety Jester and the Traveler offered. Jester remembered her friend’s eye-rolls that came with pranks, chuckles, and crossed arms, a tender woman who made herself a shield. 

Jester understood that profoundly; she was her mother’s only and eldest daughter, Veth and her were alike. 

They would do better the second time, better and more stable. And the roof could be a different color. The new temple would be a salve for the last few catastrophes.

_And maybe this time I will steal her and Yeza away with me. Even if the Traveler says they wouldn’t like the forest, it would be better than in a wizard’s grasp and prison. It would be like I was a real powerful fey, or a priestess; stealing away humans and mortals into my realm._

A bit of her was angry at the Traveler, herself, Yeza, and then Caleb. They’d all let Veth shield them, indulge them. Jester could do the same, be a shield. Start over, work with the odd wizard, even. 

_Who thinks of me and stares at me, and whose hair I can wash._

As certain as Jester was of saving Veth, she was also certain that if this was a trap, she would have to actually kill Caleb. And that would hurt; it was another new issue. Veth’s house had flown away, and so had the time to catch her breath. 

_If it’s a trap, maybe I will only wound him._ Jester refused to be punished for being kind, happy, or loyal. _I will absolutely wound him, though. He won’t get away with hurting me._

As Caleb activated the teleportation circle, he looked at her. From the very start of their relationship, and to the moment they stood in, she relished the looks. She could dine on them. The Traveler’s quips of wisdom reminded her there was no such thing as a soulmate, no matter how romantic it sounded; there were only creatures that could sate your hunger, or starve you. 

“We don’t necessarily need to hold hands,” Caleb reached for her. “But, if this is your first time doing this it could make you a bit sick, or frighten you.” Jester could tell he meant that last bit for Yeza who was cautiously leaving the wooden step. 

Yeza obediently began to reach for Caleb’s hand, but then stopped. “You’ve made quite a mess of us all haven’t you?”

Caleb swallowed and nodded, hurt feelings laid all over his previously neutral face. Veth had complained about how the wizard liked to hang about their house like a stray cat. 

_“You are alone?”_

_No, the Traveler and Veth are here. Are you alone, Bren? Caleb?_

_“Your people took something from me a long time ago.”_

_We are wanting and wounded in similar ways._

Jester did not appreciate him being humbled by someone other than herself--certainly not by the man she partially blamed for Veth’s situation. “You’re the one who took the job, Yeza, and really Caleb has been super nice to you, Veth told me so, and if anyone should be mad at him it’s me because he’s been taking up a lot of my time and I’m leaving my temple because-”

Yeza jumped a bit, remembering she was there. Jester realized he’d been careful to not look at her the entire time. “W-Well, maybe I deserve to be a bit mad! When your King’s mages come to your door and ask you to do work-- _honest_ work--you do it!”

Caleb visibly wilted, so Jester grabbed his hand. He froze and looked down, confused how his hand had ended up in her’s. Caleb shook his head and his expression back to neutral. He motioned for them all to get closer to him, “We will be back. I promise we will be back with your wife.”

But he didn’t say, “soon”. _We will be back_. Jester missed her home, her mother. This was supposed to be Caleb’s home and yet, he had grown palored at the realization they were going to Rexxentrum. Yeza Brenatto awkwardly held onto Caleb’s pant leg, deciding not to take the other open hand of the wizard. 

Jester squeezed Caleb’s hand. Surprisingly, he gave her a squeeze back. He uttered an incantation and the spell took hold. 

There was no flash of light, it wasn’t like the sensation of falling when she used her Dimension Door. No sense of show or wonder was in this incredible act. They were in his basement, and then they were in another basement. Done.

This basement had more bookshelves at least. “This is Rexxentrum?” Jester asked. 

“No, this is my house,” Caleb quickly moved past Yeza, releasing Jester's hand as fast as he could, and opened a wooden chest in the corner. Jester found herself disappointed at the continued plainness of everything, the bland styles, the strictness. “Here, put these on.” He handed Yeza and Jester both red robes, simple, but with a gold tassel around the waist. 

For Yeza, his was larger than a blanket, pooling at his feet and with sleeves like sheets. For Jester, she felt like she was bursting out of the robes as she tied them closed. Caleb clasped his hands together, holding them to his face and realizing the issue. “Okay, perhaps only Jester for now will be wearing the robes, _Herr_ Brenatto.”

Yeza nodded a few times, “Yeah, that makes sense...” He warily looked up at Jester, and then turned pleading eyes to Caleb. “I’m employed by the Assembly; who is _she_ going to be? I’m not lying for her...”

“I’m going to be really sad and have hurt feelings if you keep looking at me like I’m evil or something!” Jester crossed her arms and the seams of the robe sleeves split under her arms. “Shit-” She quickly cast her Mending cantrip and the seams joined together again. 

“She will be my guest and associate, and if asked further questions, she is my apprentice.” Jester felt a laugh rumble in her that she had to hold down. “And I know you are frazzled, _Herr_ Brenatto; you have every right to be. I will remind you, though, Jester did save your wife from goblins. And your wife lied for her enough as it is.”

The halfling man looked at his shoes before finally giving Jester his full attention. “My wife talked about you. She tells me all about you healing her, and making her food, and having her over. She was so happy to speak of you that I never suspected you were the person Sir Ermendrurd could be looking for. I never suspected you were cruel, or working to hurt the Empire, or making my wife lie to protect you, and then making her vandalize our _home_.”

She knew he was partially correct, but only partially, “And what if I said that your _wife_ \--” Jester had liked this man only because Veth loved him.”--killed a hundred goblins! At one point I had to hold her back because she was getting scary and weird about killing goblins! She loved it and she almost stayed in the forest forever with me.”

This crushed the halfling. “That’s not what I care about! I care about her lying! She lied to me because of you! Killing a lot of goblins is incredible. I think that’s great and wish she had _told_ me _more_ about that.”

Jester could feel the hot and frustrated tears in her throat, she’d never had anyone to argue with, had so few people to ever tell her she was right or wrong because no one had seen her to begin with. She knew she would implode if she started crying in front of Yeza.

Before that could happen Caleb grabbed a hold of her elbow, and led her up the stairs. Jester began to protest, pull back to try and defend herself to her friend’s husband, her friend’s _family._ Jester hadn’t meant for Veth to get wrapped up in the Traveler, and she would never make Veth do anything she did not want. A thousand times Veth had rolled her eyes before taking the pamphlets or the firecrackers and smoke bombs. But she had never said “no”. 

_Maybe because she was afraid to say no._

Jester in the heat of her emotions vaguely noticed furniture covered with sheets, the upstairs was only a little lighter than the basement had been. The whole of his house seemed to be paused, like he’d gone on a long vacation. Caleb spun her around and held her elbows, he was taller than her so he had to lean to her level to be staring right at her. He froze when he saw her scrunched face. He tutted, “Oh please, don’t tell me you’re going to let that tiny man hurt you. He is angry, but not at you; not you, Lavorre.”

Jester choked on a laugh, swallowing it to give her time to have a comeback bubble up. “You looked upset when he yelled at you earlier.” 

Caleb’s mouth opened and closed, “You saw that.”

“I’ve seen you _naked_ , Caleb.” She was never going to let him forget that. 

“And I have seen you as well, but you don’t ever frame it that way.” 

_He’s right. I hate that. I hate how he can’t be fooled. I can trick him, and trip him, and laugh when he stumbles, but he knows me and it’s so frustrating, Traveler._

Caleb continued, serious again, “I need you to go back to the basement and apologize to _Herr_ Brenatto.” She started to protest, but Caleb stopped her with a look. “I know. I really do know. I could not leave him in Felderwin anymore than I could have left you. I want this to work, and if it does not then my head is on the chopping block. Hells, it might already be. I am going to explain to _Herr_ Brenatto that you are my apprentice-”

“Does that mean I have to call you master?” 

This time he was the one laughing, “Gods, no. You’re too powerful.”

“Fine, then I’ll just say it to keep up appearances, Master Ermendrud.” Scowling childhood tutors marched away in her memories. Her mother only ever had enough time for a bedtime proverb, a breakfast discussion or two. 

He was at a loss for words. “I- You- We are getting off track!” Caleb took a quick look around, scowling at the state of the room and house. “I plan to offset both the appearance of you and Brenatto with my own.”

Caleb then bolted up a staircase, leaving Jester in the sheet covered living room. She called after him, but he was gone for what seemed like less than a second, not enough time for Jester to snoop or uncover what his home could have been like before it was packed up, and he was sent away. He came down the stairs and Jester forced herself to not stare at the new person--the mage from Rexxentrum. 

The only signs of Felderwin on him was that his hair was a bit tousled, and there was scruff around his face: he had left behind his brown and beige clothes and everything else. He was wearing a red coat, clasped tight with gold buttons. Around his waist there was a sash like belt that cinched the coat and framed his figure. 

_He’s even wearing a fucking side cape!_

Bren-- _Caleb, Caleb, Caleb_ \--cleared his throat. “Do I look that stupid?”

“You look like you know how to duel, with like a fancy skinny sword.”

“A rapier?” He laughed, audibly, shocking himself and Jester. “The illusion must be particularly strong if it had fooled even you.” 

\-----------------------------------------------

They stepped into a neighborhood of oak trees and rolling hills, the wind howled and Jester had to rub her arms. It had to be late afternoon, but there was a wall of clouds blanketing the sky. Jester looked back at the door they’d exited. Caleb’s home was large, built with bleached pale wood and black stone window panes. There were oak trees across the lawn and only a mile away Jester could make out similarly oppressive, gigantic homes. The manors, though, were nothing compared to the tower at the center of the neighborhood, reaching into the sky and dwarfing even the old oaks. It cast a shadow across Caleb’s home and was shaped like a twisting, monolithic stake. 

_Maybe they hunt vampires?_ Jester swallowed down nausea as she tried to make sense of the structure. She’d been about to use Disguise Self before leaving Caleb’s home, but he’d stopped her, explaining that the mages in Rexxentrum would see through the magic and ask more questions. 

_A place of little and many illusions, huh. I’ll adapt._

“Is that where the Emperor lives?” Yeza asked, his neck craning so that his hair was touching his back and shoulder blades. “Are you neighbors with King Dwendal?!”

Caleb shook his head and began marching down his brick paved walkway towards the street. There was a gate ahead that he was trying to shepherd them. Jester and Yeza were awestruck. “That is my master’s tower: Ambition’s Call.” Jester followed close to Caleb. The trees leaned in the wind towards their group, almost like they were reaching for them. Her hair blew into her eyes, forcing her to take a ribbon out of her pocket and tie up her hair. Veth was also a believer in little trinkets to ward away fear. Jester’s mouth was dry at the thought of her friend somewhere in a fairytale tower like Ambition’s Call. Most fairytales ended well-- _most_. Caleb caught a look at the ribbon and quietly, so that Yeza or maybe the tower would not hear, asked, “From the Harvest Festival; you kept your ribbons?”

_It was the first time I’ve ever felt like I could do what I wanted. Of course I kept them._ Jester touched the orange strands in her hair. “Do you like them?” She answered happily, despite the feeling of the wind stealing away the words. 

The Traveler’s silence followed closely to the Rexxtrentum atmosphere.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

_Bren_

Bren pushed open the iron gate that led to the neighborhood, the small bit of Trent’s kingdom, that had sheltered Bren after he’d suffered from the home for boys. 

He was home. But he was with _her,_ and the orange ribbons she’d worn that day at the Harvest Festival. Bren knew she would do no purposeful harm; what harm instead could come to her was on the mind. 

_And what harm has come of Veth?_ A long time ago he’d seen this city as the safest, most beautiful place in the whole of his small world. The many roomed manor houses, and the museums carefully tended to Zemnian artifacts felt like a celebration of his mother’s heritage in the way it was meant to be seen: proudly and with reverence. He had brought an enterloper into town, a potentially chaotic shift. He had brought his _sheda._ “Jester, walk behind me and keep your arms clasped, eyes low.”

“As you wish, magic _master_.” Jester filed behind him throwing a thumbs up and a wink his way. 

She made him want to slam the gate shut, run back into his tomb of a home and order her to stay put, stay safe, stay away. Disguising herself with magic would not work, but mildness could do wonders in Rexxentrum if only she would try it out. He caught a look at Yeza Brenatto who was already pale and fraught with a quiver that made him appear like a leaf in a hurricane. He considered that sometimes sensitivity could make you a victim. The days of being thrown into dark cellars and beaten with a broom were not as far as the years implied. 

_Someone will take a single look at Jester Lavorre walking behind me, and they’ll know. They’ll see her magic, her power, dancing about her with no reverence. There’s no scenario anyone would believe me her teacher._

He began his walk into the Shimmer Ward with the pair in tow, and was overcome with the need to make this world seem less...hostile. “It’s much nicer...on a sunny day.”

The exquisite gardens and the air of wealth was not lost on Jester or Yeza or Bren. It overwhelmed, making the trio move cautiously. Jester pulled close to him and from behind he could hear her rubbing her arms in the ill fitting robe. More guilt settled against his throat and in his stomach. 

While the disaster circling around him and the Brenatto’s felt cosmically ordained, commissioned by a series of events that only a war would produce; Bren had fallen into Jester’s life by accident. He had not been meant to go to the Harvest Festival that day, but someone had to accompany his master, and Astrid had thought it would be ‘good’ for him. Eudowolf had agreed, both his friends hoped his recovery was a stable one. Bren would have been touched, his friends had given off the appearance of having missed him while he was ‘rebuilt’. He would have been touched if not for the truth of their concern: while Bren was not there to take the brunt of their master’s anger, they had suffered in his stead. They would tease, saying Bren was always the favorite; they knew the truth and teased him nevertheless. Being the favorite did not change the weight of responsibility that was caring and pleasing their master. 

Bren had gone to the festival, had stood at attention in the corner of the luxury tents that housed the Assembly members while they visited, and had let the Geas chain around his neck remind him that second chances were luxuries and not guaranteed. 

Bren had heard the two guards at the flap of their tent talking about Jester’s vandalism (‘there were seven false versions of the priest! And we kept arresting the real priest!’) as he passed to go find some place to eat. His feet had carried him away from the stalls and vendors and towards the temple of Bahamut. If King Dwendal had not declared an increase in troops to the Ashguard Garrison, maybe her vandalism would have sparked more attention in Rexxentrum. It was beautiful. Even in the era where Bren had made her out to be the monster of his past, he had still been awed, humbled by how much paint and color had been intricately splashed onto the statue of the Platinum Dragon. 

In the present, Jester wore an orange ribbon from that day. It was like a tug, an anchor that when Bren caught her in the corner of his eye he felt the desire to simultaneously shelter Rexxentrum from her and her from Rexxentrum. No one knew her here, and Bren could feel that it wouldn’t be long before they did. 

_I’m home and all I can think about is the woman behind me. This has to stop._

They passed a home with high hedges, a shop selling new leather bound journals; they had not passed anyone on the street that Bren knew or recognized. Bren took in a breath, seeing Derogna’s tower a block away. “The poor weather was a blessing today,” he said. Students must have been taking shelter in doors. 

“Master Ermendrud?” Except for the most inconvenient of all. Bren turned to his left, seeing Jija, a human girl made of limbs that looked like a young mare’s legs and second-hand robes that were fraying at hem. If it had been another student he could have maybe gotten away with an impartial greeting, something like a curt nod of his head. Jija had fresh bandages on her arms, the white gauze peaked out from under her sleeves. He smiled at the girl and forced every muscle in his face to not go taut with anger. Bren had told Astrid that Jija was not to be a Volstrucker. He had mentored the girl himself, trained her for a brief time before his breakdown. She was a gentle girl, squeamish during the lessons of harvesting spell components from frog’s livers and snake’s skin, and most importantly she had too many family members. 

It was impossible; Astrid had gone behind his back when he was absent. 

“Miss Jija,” Bren beamed at her, reminding himself to show the girl the emotions he had for her, and not the feelings he had for what was done to her. “It has been many months.”

The girl looked at Jester and then Yeza, realizing Bren had guests, the girl began to recalculate addressing him and speaking to him. He wanted so badly to drop the pretense, gesture to the two people next to him and say: ‘Jija, yes, these are people wrapped up in my mistakes and I’m about to go argue with Derogna for the safety and release of a third. No need to be scared; how have you been? Have they hurt you?’

Jija rubbed one of her bandaged arms, swallowed and straightened herself. She stood rigid and hastily asked, “Will you be returning to instruction soon? Our class has missed you…We made you a card...”

He had never received it. The haze of the medical gurney he’d be strapped to and then the bed in Ikithon’s tower were days of isolation, foggy and dark isolation. “I’m sure you have all done very well in my absence.”

The girl had a glossy sheen to her eyes. Bren hoped Eudowolf had at least given her the tea leaves to chew on after the surgery. Bren could remember long nights of stuffing his pillow into his mouth and screaming. The leaves had been an Astrid discovery, two years after Bren had started his Awakenings. 

Bren had fought to keep this girl from the frontline, from the politics, from the surgical chair. Here she was though, with a meekness in her voice and bandages on her arms. 

_‘Await further orders in Felderwin’ Yes, and while you are gone we will disregard everything you did to ensure these children were thrust into the fire._

“Hello!” Jester’s cut in, shocking both Bren and Jija. “It is wonderful to meet Master Ermendrud’s other students.”

Jija bowed to Jester. Jester gave Bren a look that said: ‘You’re students are so _fancy_.’ Jester bowed back to Jija and threw all the poor girl’s assumptions of rank into flux. Masters and elders did not bow to students. Jija fumbled for a second and muttered, “Master Ermendrud is she to be among the Awakened? I don’t recognize you from Soltryce, I’m sorry. Your accent is very unique...”

This was probably Jija’s polite way of getting around the fact that Jester as a tiefling, and a cobalt blue tiefling at that.

“This is an acquaintance of mine, Jija. Both are my guests.” Bren clasped his hand at Jester’s elbow. Flawlessly, Jester nodded, lying in tandem. Lies in his work were a snug coat, a well worn garment that would become a second skin. Jester must have felt the same, because next to him she played along well. Yeza’s feet jittered and like his house he seemed ready to fly away at any second. If Jija noticed this she did not show it, she kept her eyes on Jester.

Jija shook her head then, realizing she’d been staring and said, “We are very happy to have you back, _Freiherr_ Ermendrud. And we are honored to have foreign guests in Rexxentrum.” She clearly wanted to vent to Bren, things left unsaid between Volstruckers was a frequent occurrence, but she scampered off. Bren wanted to call her back to correct her, _Freiherr_ was not his title and if she went around using them incorrectly there would be consequences. She was still a young recruit, not fully Awakened, and therefore not yet part of the posse that only Trent could correct and by extension--protect. 

The frustration at seeing Jija now a Volstrucker--a Scourger in the making--melted as he continued to lead Jester and Yeza to Derogna’s tower, the mocking structure that had only been one block away. “Please don’t do that again,” he said. 

“What? Me? What ever could you mean?” Jester said. What she’d deciphered on her own muddled the usual airy sound of her voice. What secrets had she uncovered by just looking at the girl’s bandaged arms? It amazed him, how she danced through life, her spell casting messy and easy, and never missed a beat in her chaos. The way she existed could lead a person to believe she was a simpleton. He’d been wrong to assume she was a careless murderer working for the Angel of Irons, so Bren refused to make the mistake again of assuming she was stupid. 

_You brought her here for some misguided reason...that’s proof enough that you’re taking her somewhat seriously...or maybe not seriously enough..._

Bren could count the number of times he’d been in Derogna’s tower on his right hand. There were two unspoken rules between the Cerberus Assembly Mages; each to their own, and privacy was paramount in a world where the King demanded he be involved in everything. That didn’t stop them from gossiping about each other, competing, or privately harassing each other. Only Martinet Ludinus Da’leth had the power to move about each mage tower. He was technically their fearless leader, technically their savior. The elf had been there, years ago before even Trent Ikithon or Derogna were born, on the Eve of Crimson Midnight. There was fighting in the streets of Rexxentrum between the mages of Zemni high-born houses and the newly conquered Julos Dominion mages. The violent crucible of their magic and insurrection had led to the King at the time almost killing them all. 

Ludinus had been clever, and now mages in Rexxentrum rested in some of the highest authority and control of the Empire since the old age of Arcanum. 

Bren sometimes would shudder, considering and realizing that he was playing a game with creatures older than him, who had talked their way out of executions. He was only twenty five, and he had to swallow and press down on the nerves that plagued him as he wrapped the knocker on Derogna’s gargantuan door. 

Yeza had said very little on the way to the tower, he was inhaling loudly and exhaling weakly. 

Jester said, “This door is so big you could drive a carriage through it.” 

The door swung inwards, and in the grand foyer with the spiraling staircase, was Vess Derogna. Something was wrong; the door opened too quickly, her eyes twitched, and she looked surprisingly relieved to see them. 

“Oh good,” The Archmage of Antiquity had never hated Bren, just hated who he served. Her voice was low and venomous when she addressed them. “So you weren’t the ones who helped her escape, then.”

Yeza Brenatto pushed to the front of the party in an uncharacteristic moment of bravery. “Lady Derogna, Please- Please, where is my wife- I’m sorry for my- my- impertinence I-” He butchered the landing, though. 

“If she’d stayed in her room you could have been swiftly reunited with her.” The woman descended the staircase Bren could have sworn she was frazzled. “At least I know now that it wasn’t you trying to humiliate me, Ermendrud.”

Ah, it was strange to be home. No more nice couples who lived in Felderwin and kept to themselves. “Where is Veth Brenatto?” 

“I couldn’t tell you.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Veth_

Veth pulled open drawers and cabinets in her prison. She’d withstood an archmage’s magic and made a few dirty jokes. Now she needed to actually escape. No windows to climb from, and no tools to pick a lock (the door did not have one, anyway). Veth would pull a random drawer out from the work-table. Each time she opened or closed the drawer new tools appeared. She'd dumped the contents onto the floor (glass vials, tweezers, crucible-tongs, magnifying glasses, small pieces of scrap paper) watching the pile of each item rise by the hundred. She would then shove the drawer back into its place, and when opened again the item would restock itself or be a different item. 

Her sweet, adorable, kind, and good at chemistry husband could do something with the tools on hand: make an acid to burn the door down and alchemist fire to burn Derogna with it. 

It was a lab of infinite resources and no escapes, a prison with a door without a lock to pick, and a room that could not be lit on fire. Veth had tried with a small blow torch device. She threw a chair against the wall and it harmlessly bounced back. 

_No one is coming to save me this time: no Yeza to make me feel loved, no Jester to make me feel safe, and no Caleb to make me feel powerful._

_“Only me to make you feel frustrated, halfling mouse.”_

Veth was desperate enough that the familiar heckling was a comfort. “Some god you are; can’t get me out of a room, can’t keep my house from floating away; stood there and let me get kidnapped.”

“ _No one likes a whiner, Vethy.”_

She grabbed a drawer and violently yanked it. This time eyedroppers spilled, more useless tools. Veth sank to the floor, she’d made a mess of the room, summoned hell and carnage with glass and beakers. “You’re not allowed to call me that.”

" _If I help you escape, can I?”_ He said it casually, making Veth almost run to him. 

Veth’s stomach flipped. “What’s the cost?” Jester was not here to temper this strange man. A sense of wonder at that laid beside her insides, flipping and flopping with the desire to escape. 

“ _Do you know why I am here?”_

He wasn’t asking about the room, or even Felderwin. He meant the realm. Veth's head spun. “To hurt and manipulate my friend?” 

“ _You are smart, but lack imagination; no...Jester is the only one of your kind worth salt.”_ The voice became tangible. The Traveler was impressively tall and cartoonishly lanky. Veth would have said his hands could be good for either playing piano or picking pockets. It was the hair, though, the eyebrows and eyes. It was like an elf, but not. A man with butterfly eyes. “ _Jester and I don’t have many goals. They change regularly, they take new forms. That is the will of what is interesting. If I had to place it in words you could understand I would say we are correctives to the dullness and dust that has settled upon...Well, everything, really. The temple has fallen, meaning we will have to rebuild. Where better than somewhere so close to all of these wonderful and delightfully awful mages.”_

It was the longest he’d ever spoken to Veth. It had almost been a soliloquy. It had his and Jester’s characteristic logic, confusing and unsettling, but it told Veth what she was curious most about: if this was all for a good time, then why be so elaborate about it, and why keep Caleb in the mix. “Who had the idea for the temple?”

“ _Jester’s, but similar goals take different plans. Last time it was unicorn domestication. I am still saddened that didn't pan out.”_

He could be lying, Veth thought and grappled. She had to choose her questions carefully. “What is the cost of you helping me escape?”

Easy and simple.

The Traveler stepped forward, his footsteps were silent despite crushing broken glass under his bare feet. “ _You are precious to her. I help you escape, like she helped you in the forest, and you learn to drop your facade. I’ve watched you play housewife for too long, and while Jester will not push you, I will. Let go, Veth, the Brave. There are things that will find Jester and her wizard’s interest in this city. Stay with them here and help us. And I promise you will never know powerlessness again.”_

Veth hated him for knowing. Jester too. Everyone wanted to be seen, except like this. It was confrontational, not at all sweet or nerve wracking like Caleb giving her the sword. She had hated him too then; now, she would have preferred his prying to this. “What about my husband?”

“ _What about him? He’s yours: tell him the truth, recruit him, love him, leave him. Find some balance, my hawkish halfling. If you want it all then take it all. But, do not abandon Jester Lavorre in this hostile city.”_ The fey--he had to be, the impish grin was clue enough--had been there for Veth’s silly pranks, pushing her slightly or playing with her. This was serious. This was a contract, a deal. 

“You’re scared for her.” 

The fey _flinched_ , actually flinched. He straightened back to confidence quickly, and stuck out his hand to cover up the lapse into mortality he’d shown. “ _Last chance to back out of this promise with me.”_

“You’d find a way to guilt me with Jester.” _Or maybe I'll accept that I want adventure. I'm good at it. There was something wrong with your days in Felderwin with a callous father and brother. And then with a man who was being blackmailed by magicians. What did this guy say he and Jester were? Correctors?_

She took Artagan’s hand, only then considering an inconsistency in the story: “Wait, Jester is coming to Rexxentrum? I told her not to-”

The Traveler pulled Veth to the wall of the room, with his free hand he drew a square with his index finger, and a mirror of sorts materialized. His grip was tight, and before Veth could stop him, she was being thrown into a thing that looked less like window and more like mirror. 

_I hate gods and politics._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! I had to take a hiatus and get my stuff together. I believe starting now I can get back to updating once every two weeks, but I'm not sure. This officially has become the longest fanfic I've ever written. Also, the longest fanfic I've ever kept track of.


End file.
